Buying a Car DURING RETIREMENT
Maybe your decades-old car finally bit the dust. Maybe your ride got totaled by a teenager on a smartphone. Or maybe you just want a new set of wheels. There are a lot of reasons why you may find yourself looking to buy a car, and there are a lot of questions to answer before you do. The first question is, did you plan for this expense? The average American buys a new car every seven to 10 years, so if you plan on 20 years of retirement, you need to factor in at least two car purchases during that time — and possibly more. The second question is the biggest one: Where’s the money going to come from? Most people, including most retired people, will finance their new car and trade in the old one. This is a good option for people with steady retirement income, such as those drawing a pension. But it might be harder to get a loan
if your income is less consistent, say, if you liquidate investment assets every month to pay the bills. Third, could you just pay cash? Most of us don’t have buckets of the stuff lying around, but you can always tap into an IRA or other account for the money to buy a car. Try to do half in December and half in January to split the tax penalty between two years. You could also sell off two cars` and use the money they generate to buy one, which will cut down on other car-related expenses as well. The last question is, what are the hidden costs? Maintenance and repairs are just par for the course, but they don’t tell you that as you age, your insurance premiums could go up, especially after that texting teenager T-boned you.Your retirement planner should have a big-picture idea of what you should plan and watch out for when you buy a car.
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“I nearly did. I made it to Atlanta and did the same thing for a couple more years, and then one morning, I woke up in Rome. I still don’t know how I got here. But I was walking down the main street when Jug’s wife, Sadie Jane, saw me. She said she recognized me from some old photos at the house where she and Jug now lived. I can’t see how, but sure am glad she did.”
It was big, grey, and about 10 feet tall. It had short things where legs and arms are supposed to be and one for the head. Also, I couldn’t see any recognizable features. It kind of looked like a cloud, except it was coming right at me.”
“What was it, and what did you do?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know what it was exactly,” he said. ”But it was some kind of a Haint. You remember me telling you how fast I was? Well, sir, I started down that mountain wide open with that thing not too far behind me. It was screaming like a banshee, and I was scared to death. Nah, I was terrified. No German or Chinaman ever scared me that bad. I kicked my shoes off while I was running and put it in passing gear. I caught the first dog about a third of the way down the mountain and passed the second one shortly after. I was afraid to look back, ‘cause I knew it was gaining. Don’t ask me how; I just knew it. I was chattering so bad from fear that I chattered my new government teeth out on the ground. “When I got home, everybody, including me, thought I was about to have a heart attack. I finally got calmed down and was able to tell the story. Both dogs were home by now and had run up under the house, and even Sadie couldn’t get them to come out. “The next morning, we went back up the mountain. We found my shoes, light, and the .22 rifle I carried, but no teeth. We looked for several days but never found them teeth. So, I figured that was what that thing wanted, and although Sadie has tried to get me to get some more, I ain’t gonna do it. I’d be afraid that Haint would want them too.” “Yep, without my teeth, I can’t talk plain, and folks got to calling me ‘Mumbles’ because of it.” As I drove back to the police department, I wondered if I had just been had. Has another old-timey slick bootlegger just led me on another wild goose chase. Or was he just lonely and wanted somebody to talk with. “So that’s why you mumble when you talk,” I said.
“So, what did she do?” I asked.
“She took me home with her. Sadie, I found out a little later, is big on taking in strays — me included. She and Jug cleaned me up and fixed me a place in the back of the tool shed, along with Slippy Larue.”
“Who is that? “ I asked. “That the guy you see all the time with Jug?”
“That’s him,” Mumbles replied. “He fell from a freight train years ago and thinks he’s a butterfly. He really is about one taco short of a combo, but he don’t know it. Anyway, he took good care of me. “After a couple of years, I was almost as good as new. I started helping Jug and Slippy at the still. I pretty much got my health back. “Oh, I forgot. Sadie got me an appointment with the VA, and they got me some new teeth after they pulled the bad ones I had. “I started climbing that old mountain again that I loved so much as a kid. By the end of summer, I was back to running up and down that thing and it sure felt good. I couldn’t wait for fall and coon season to open. “We started going pretty much every night when it did. Jug and Slippy went a lot, but there were lots of nights when I was by myself. That’s when it happened.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I was several miles from the house following Jet and Brownie, our dogs. They were hot on the trail of what I hoped was a great big one. It was a pretty easy trail. We had been on a fire break for the past two miles. It was a full moon, and I didn’t really even need my light. Then I saw it, coming over the top of the mountain.
Couldn’t have been the truth, could it?
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