Passive Income

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My wife and I absolutely love Dave Ramsey. We attended his 13-week Financial Peace University, began following his “baby-steps” program, and began to simplify our lives.

We quickly completed the first baby-step, which was to save $1,000 to use as a small emergency fund. This gave us a place to start. In previous attempts to get control of our finances, we tried to do everything all at once. This always lead to disaster.

We are currently tackling baby-step #2 (The Debt Snowball). Hopefully, if all goes as planned, this step will be completed in 12 – 18 months.

Putting our background behind us for now, last week our Jetta blew up. Of course, the first thing we did was take it to the Stealership to find out what was wrong. The Volkswagon Stealership charged us $95, just to tell us what was wrong with it. Then they proceeded to give us a quote of $1,600. The main thing that was wrong with it was the water pump and the timing belt. How could this cost so much money?

Luckily for us, this all occurred on Friday, so we had the weekend to think about it. A friend from our small group suggested we take it to a small shop where she had previously taken her car, with tremendous success. On Monday, we called and talked with “Tony”, who turned out to be one of the nicest guys I have ever met.

To make a long story short, Tony had our car towed from the stealership to his shop (boy – was Volkswagon mad). After letting him work on it for a few days, we went and picked up our car. The price tag – $1,100. Dang! That was still more than our emergency fund.

Taking advise from Dave’s book, we went to the bank and got out our $1,000 in cash (from the emergency fund). Once we got to the shop, we asked if he would give us a discount if we paid in cash. YUP! And not just a few bucks to appease us. This guy knocked the bill down to $950. We saved $650 by using a local business and cash.

Has anyone else ever had success using cash or by buying from a small, local dealer? If not, I highly recommend trying it. You could end up saving a lot of money.

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