The art of the deal... finally.

I remember the first car I bought when I was in my mid 20s, a Datsun B210.  I was nervous in the salesman's office making the deal.  All the terms were new to me, and I didn't really know where the leverage points were as we were dealing.  I was nervous about the financing too.  I didn't really know anything about credit and how it worked.  I had to leave the dealership for about 3 days in a row with no deal in order to check with others on whether I had missed anything about the deal.  I just didn't know.

After many years and a whole string of cars, I found myself again at a car dealer at the end of this year.  Through those years, I made some bad decisions and some really good ones.  Some cars I was proud of and drove for a long time, while others were just doomed cars - one that sat in front of my house that a 17-year-old hit the day after I brought it home from the lot.  (That was the same car for which the dealer failed to make the pay-off of my trade-in.  After I received notice of past due payment three weeks after the deal and made three calls to the general manager, they finally paid off the car.)  Each car brought more experience to me about all of the ways car salesmen and dealers make their money.

All of those years had made me much better with the art of the deal.  This time I wasn't nervous at all.  I knew all the leverage points (including time of year) and shady practices of the dealers and salesmen.  It was actually kind of a pleasure this time to sit down and see how the salesman was approaching the various points of the deal.  Sitting across the desk from the business manager didn't raise the stress levels either.  As he rapidly went through the numbers so that I wouldn't notice the leverage point numbers he had put in, it was kind of amusing.  We would talk about each of those numbers, and he would change them to some lesser negotiated number.

So, this time at the end of the deal, I didn't walk away wondering how I got screwed this time.  I left with a smile on my face from a really good deal for a really nice car.  And that's the best way to leave one year in the dust and drive right into the next one... in the driver's seat with a smile on my face.  Viva 2016!