Paying for cars with CASH?

^ Sure, because it's not possible that someone saved it up. Stupid US scare-laws.
 
A big FYI to Americans: if you pay more than $10,000 in cash, not check, at a car dealership, they are required by law to inform both the IRS and the FBI. this can apply to any large purchase, not just a car.

This sneaky law is intended to keep a tab on organized crime.

^ Sure, because it's not possible that someone saved it up. Stupid US scare-laws.

It's because of the "War on Drugs." If you saved it up, you'll be able to prove you legally earned the money, but if you're a drug dealer, you might have a harder time proving where it came from.
 
And what moron uses actual cash rather than checks? That just invites the dealer or salesman to steal some and say you never paid the full amount...
 
And what moron uses actual cash rather than checks? That just invites the dealer or salesman to steal some and say you never paid the full amount...

Many dealerships now video tape the closings on cars for that reason and many others.
 
It's because of the "War on Drugs." If you saved it up, you'll be able to prove you legally earned the money, but if you're a drug dealer, you might have a harder time proving where it came from.
It's the "if you've got nothing to hide, then why not let us invade your privacy?" aspect that I don't like.
 
Well in the UK you aren't allowed to make a cash transaction of more than about ?14,000. Anti money-laundering laws. Of course that's only an issue with dealers, I've known people that have sold cars for twice that for suitcase of notes (!).

Personally I'm against finance when it's avoidable, as it always is with cars. The number of friends that have been buying their first car that i've tried to talk out of it because they'd be getting into a finance deal for an ?8000 car... They think it'll work out cheaper because they don't have to save up to buy a used car, they think it'll work out cheaper because they get a year or two free insurance or the warranty will make the difference because they're saving servicing costs.

Without exception, 3 or 4 years later they tell me they should have listened to me, saved up for a few months, bought a reliable used car for a couple of thousand and in the long run they'd have been spending way less.
 
If there is one over-riding truth in life, it's: You get what you pay for.

A thousand dollar car costs a thousand dollars for a reason.
 
It's the "if you've got nothing to hide, then why not let us invade your privacy?" aspect that I don't like.
It's just the way it is. Do you consdier it an invasion of privacy when you have to include your work/income papers when you pay your taxes?

If you saved up $10k and gave it to the dealership and the dealership deposited it, the bank isn't going to come after you, they're going to want to know where the dealership got it and they'd explain. If you went into a bank and opened an account with a $15k stack of cash, they're going to want to know where you got it. It's usually the receiver of the money that has to explain, not the giver.

Most people don't even know about it, so I'm not sure how much of a "scare tactic" it is. Personally, I think it's a tax tactic. Personal gifts $10,000 or under aren't subject to tax. So if you start cashing large amounts of money over $10k, you're required to pay tax on it, depending on where it came from. Uncle Sam wants his cut.
 
I have a fair amount of customers who are in businesses that generate a lot of CASH.

Whenever they buy a car, and one of them buys four cars a year from me, they always put down around 9,500 dollars in actual cash. They may finance, lease or bring a bank check for the balance but the first part is always in cash dollars.
 
From the buyer's point of view, purchasing with cash is probably the most economical; from the seller's point of view, financing or leasing is the best. My dad taught me this principle many many years ago.
Technically, wrong. Once you pay cash for something, it's all gone. Meaning, you are not able to invest it in something that could (and should) give you something more than the average interest rate. So in fact you are sacrificing this money, by not holding onto it and investing it into something else/profitable. If you lease the car, with a reasonable - not some dealer screw over - interest rate, then you still have a lot of money to invest around, which should bring you more than the interest rate you have to pay extra for your deal. So theoretically, given a reasonable interest rate, it's always better to chose an option where you don't have to give away all your cash at once.

Practically of course, this is not really the case, for the reasons mentioned already, such as people (including myself) don't like loans/borrowing/financing etc, you either have the money or don't principle. :)

Actually, I'm not really sure about this article, basically for the reason I mentioned above. It works the same way for the dealer too, theoretically he should prefer cash NOW, that he himself could invest in whatever, rather then waiting for it to come in small sums over years and years. Relying on trapping in some customers for the extra rate he can rip off them, is for me some sort of dealer stupidity.

But then again, with so many financial instruments nowadays that even the most hardcore finance guys can't keep up with, it's sometimes impossible to find the logic behind things.
 
Umm one thing also they dont mention is the fact some cars lender wont write loans over $100k. So for people who do plan to finance for a car that cost that much, they will take a home loan, which to do the car dealer is like buying with Cash. Then again if your getting a car that cost that much a lot of people might have the money to play full cash, or large down payment.
 
Perhaps next time you purchase a car, you can show up at the dealership with some real cash - :p

 
A big FYI to Americans: if you pay more than $10,000 in cash, not check, at a car dealership, they are required by law to inform both the IRS and the FBI. this can apply to any large purchase, not just a car.

This sneaky law is intended to keep a tab on organized crime.
Yes, but if I weren't a drug dealer I wouldn't mind. And I happily pay my taxes, after all, you Americans pay so little taxes and duties, you can't complain. :p

Perhaps next time you purchase a car, you can show up at the dealership with some real cash - :p

I did that to a taxi once. We have Krones in Norway, 1 krone = 100 ?re, and the smallest coin is the 50 ?re. 1 USD is about 6 NOK or something.

-

Payed a taxi bill of 245 NOK with 50-?res. Woho! :D
 
It's because of the "War on Drugs." If you saved it up, you'll be able to prove you legally earned the money, but if you're a drug dealer, you might have a harder time proving where it came from.

It's actually for tax enforcement. When your tax return is processed by the IRS, one of the things they process are these forms (I forget the form number offhand). If they see that you claimed to make $35,000 gross that year, but gave a car dealer $40,000 in cash...they might just ask you about it.

The reason people think of it for drugs these days is because the use of cash in every day businesses has dropped so much in the past 20 to 30 years. But back in the 1960s, for example, a small family owned grocery store might have an ENORMOUS amount of cash pass through it that might not get mentioned to the IRS.

Now many "cash heavy" businesses are illicit. Obviously not all, but the days of small to mid size businesses having owners skimming significantly large amounts of cash have declined substantially.

Steve
 
If there is one over-riding truth in life, it's: You get what you pay for.

A thousand dollar car costs a thousand dollars for a reason.

Psst - this was an *eight hundred dollar* car:

IMG_0776.sized.jpg


There are bargains to be found out there.

For the most part though, yes, you usually get what you paid for.
 
Yeah, and that is a killer looking Jag, but would you say it's "worth" only $800?
 
At the time I bought it, it was worth about $3200. One owner, decent shape, normal minor ills of the model, none of the major ones.

I got it for $800 because someone couldn't spell "Jaguar" in an eBay ad - and couldn't write a good ad for it to save their life.

I also paid cash for my (now sadly deceased) XKR - a cash deposit, and a wire transfer to the dealership for the rest (courtesy of a loan from my friendly local credit union for much much less than the dealer offered me).
 
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Yeah, that sounds about right. It feels good when you find a great deal on something like that. I'm actually working on my own little deal right now, but I'd rather not say what it is until I close it. 8)
 
Yup. Apparently the eBay ad poster (not the original owner) thought the car was South African or Dutch, because they spelled the brand name as "Jaaguar".
 
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