I'm losing my job tomorrow, with two kids, a car and a house. What is my best thing to do?
Tell everyone you know you’re looking for a job. Network on LinkedIn and other social media.File for unemploymentPrioritize your bills - must have (electric), want to have (cable), can be late (credit cards), can ignore/deferred (paying back your brother/student loan). Know when you’re going to run out of money.[Edit] Thanks to everyone who pointed out to call your creditors. They’ll work out slow to delayed payment schedules.Plan for bankruptcy. There’s never a better time.Look into tapping your 401k after being laid off. Yes, it’s a bad idea… but better than homeless.Spend 50 hours a week looking for jobs in your field. Do this locally for a week, then spread out nationally if possible. Look for remote positions if you cannot move. Customize EVERY resume using key words from the job description. Have 40 bullet points and skills/results for your resume - use 25 on any given resume.Looking for a job is NOW your full-time job.After a national search in your field, go outside your field.After savings and unemployment are gone, take ANY job. File for federal assistance.Spend 15 hours a week looking out for yourself. Get to the gym. Start running. Make lunch plans with colleagues and friends. Immerse yourself in a hobby you used to love (after the job search hours are done).Go to parks with the kids. Take your wife out on a date to just watch the stars.Don’t panic or get stressed out. You’ve been without money before. You’ll be fine in a few months.[Edit: I was laid off seven months ago. This is how I prioritized.Your situation may be different. Your retirement may be a higher prioritization. Your credit score may be a bigger deal to you. You may not be able to move to a different part of the country.For me, it worked fine. I had a job offer 7 weeks later. I moved for the new job 10 weeks later about 500 miles north. Grabbing some dollars out of my 401k, that became available after rolling over to a traditional IRA, kept me above water. I probably put my retirement target age back about 6 or 10 months. If I was 58-years-old, it would have bothered me - a lot. But for now, it cost me a 10% IRS penalty and I lost future earnings on what I took out.Thanks for reading]
What would happen if everyone bought an electric car tomorrow?
Alright, *poof,* everyone gets electrical cars. Let’s run with that. I’ll also restrict this to a US example because it’s hard enough to sort out how many cars are in use.There are about 275 million passenger vehicles in the United States. If you restrict the count to “light duty, short wheelbase” vehicles and exclude trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc., that’s about 180 million. Let’s round up to 200 million electric cars.Further, let’s figure all the electric cars have 85kWh battery packs like Teslas. While 250 miles is a fairly reasonable range for that, the Tesla owners I’ve met (anecdote warning) say they usually get 300 miles between charges. I’ll stick with 300 miles because…The average American driver covers 29.2 miles per day. Let’s round that to 30 miles per day.Alright. What this means is that the 200 million new electric cars need 85kWh per 10 days, or 8.5kWh per day, or 3,060kWh per year. For comparison, a typical American household uses 10,400kWh per year. At first blush, this isn’t a radical increase in power demand.Let’s look at the big picture:200 million new electric cars draw 3060kWh per year each: that’s 612,000,000,000kWh per year or 612 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year (if I didn’t slip some decimal spaces.) For comparison, in 2017, US electrical consumption was 4,090TWh at an average of 467GW production.Across a year, 612 TWh would need 70 more gigawatts of power production above the average demand of 467GW. The US has a total installed capacity of 1,072GW, so theoretically it could absorb the demand. However, a lot of the power plants behind that figure are peaking plants that usually don’t run constantly. Fuel demand for coal and natural gas plants would shoot up to cover the increase.But in the short term the grid won’t crash, especially if people stagger their charging or mostly charge at night.In the long run, the grid would benefit from about 70GW of new baseload plants like coal or nuclear. That’s a 15% increase, but not a crushing one.Solar would be a terrible option since it delivers peak power when the cars are away from home and thus less likely to be charging. Wind would be typically unpredictable, but electric cars and plug-in hybrids do offer a means of buffering renewable output by putting a massive number of batteries on the grid.
Why does it take so long at a dealership to buy a new car?
In many cases, it only has to do with the inefficiency which that dealership is run. Typically, all these people are talking to you so that you don't get upset for the wait so they're just trying to keep you busy. They may also be waiting for a response from banks about the loan (keep in mind that many sales managers base the interest rate on their knowledge of what the banks will "probably" give you and not until a deal is accepted do they actually input all of your information and send it to the bank for an official approval. Whether they do this will depend on your credit.) They also have to get the vehicle ready for you to take delivery. This entails a thorough washing and detailing as well as putting gas in the vehicle. The finance manager has to get all the paperwork ready for you as well. There are many factors that could be a reason why you have to wait BUT many dealerships nowadays have made the process more efficient for customers as they know that many people feel like you so they are making their processes more efficient so that your experience is more pleasant.
Do i need the title to trade in my car?
Yes, you will need a title. Go to your local DMV and request a duplicate title. You will need your vehicle identification number and/or you license plate number. You may, also, sign a power of attorney form at your dealership allowing them to obtain a duplicate title for you. You may, also, sign a secured power of attorney allowing them to title and tag your new vehicle for you. This is from a Deputy County Clerk in Tennessee.
Does my liability insurance cover my new car ?
In most cases, you will be covered. Typically, car insurance coverage is automatically added to any new vehicle and liability extends to the new vehicle. Usually, you have 14-30 days to add it to the policy after you pick up the new vehicle. In other words, your road trip to LA should be covered. Even still, call your AAA agent to verify that is the case - Brandon C
I've been told that if you wait and fill up your car when it's almost empty it will damage the engine, and that you should always refill when you are at about a quarter of a tank full or more. Is there any truth behind this, and if so, what is the rationale?
As stated by others, they used to tell us not to run on less than 1/4 tank due to the possibility of picking up water or crud from the bottom of the tank. BUT, the fuel line draws fuel from the bottom of the tank all the time anyways, so that kind of seems to be nonsense (plus, the fuel filter should handle any minor schmutz in the gasoline).A more practical reason to not run on near-empty… one my daughter learned the hard way. Many cars today have the fuel pump located in the fuel tank. The gasoline provides cooling for the pump. If the tank goes to empty, or momentarily near-empty like when you go around a sharp corner, you risk the fuel pump over-heating and failing.In my daughter’s case, she went through 3 fuel pumps in 4 years. We kept telling her, keep the tank above 1/4 at all times. But what the problem really turned out to be was a faulty sending unit for the fuel gauge. When the gauge read 1/4 full, the tank was actually almost bone dry… that’s why the fuel pumps were burning out.So, good to not go below 1/4 tank, just in case the fuel gauge sensor is off-calibration or goes bad. Plus, you never know when you’re really, really going to need to have gasoline in your car… like when the deputy comes banging on your door at 2 AM and says you need to leave right now, there’s a wall of fire heading for your house… not the time you want to be running on fumes.