saints21

Why are you guys hell bent on aiding colleges and universities in their goal to create an indebted work force that only benefits a few ultra wealthy people?

What's the rationale behind counting a parent's income when the student has no reasonable expectation to access that income? Why are the limits do ridiculously low?

Why are you just tools to hold people down under the insidious guise of "furthering ones education" when in reality you're just creating an irreversible pool of debt?

As someone who used to sell and no longer does: Customers are the main driver behind the absurdity you're talking about. Dealerships can throw out entirely reasonable prices within or even below market averages as the first price, and most customers will bitch and moan about being screwed if the dealership is unwilling to haggle. At various times manufacturers and dealers have attempted up front no haggle pricing and every time it's bombed. Customers get upset that the dealership then won't haggle.

Easiest way to avoid this? Go into your dealership and be informed on the price and roughly what rates you can get. Tell them this reasonable price(literally just Google the lowest prices within 100 miles of you), tell them the interest rate based off either real world knowledge of your ACCURATE credit profile or a pre-approval, and see how smoothly it goes. It's how I bought my last truck. I could've gotten it about $750 cheaper with a 5 hour drive. I showed the dealer that, told them if he made this a smooth transition I wouldn't buck, was up front about my trade and credit, and I had the truck delivered from another location with a whopping half hour actually spent in the dealership.

And for the love of God don't spring a trade on the dealer at the last minute. Just be honest about what you're looking to do so that everything takes as little time as possible.

And yes, dealerships do benefit from the current model. But it's not because of making bank on new car sales. New cars are not the main profit driver in a dealership. Not by a long shot. They benefit by creating a customer base for their service side. Parts and service are your main profit centers.

My wife does not have health insurance provided through her employer(starting to be a substitute teacher). She attended university full time this year and will most likely be claiming only a few hundred for income this year...likely less than 10k next.

I will make approximately 75k next year. We live in Louisiana. If we file taxes separately can she get better rates? Does she have to claim any or all of my income? All the plans that wouldn't be ridiculously financially stressful are pretty terrible compared to any health insurance offered by any of my past employers. Getting her insurance through my current employer would cost roughly $550 to $600 a month(I only pay $30 roughly). It's an excellent plan with a max $500 deductible, low copays on all of the typical stuff, and max out of pocket of $1500 I believe. Would we better off just biting the bullet and getting it?

What do you think the average profit is on a new car?

Yeah, people don't realize that the new car department is basically just there to create demand for the service side. But, people have this idea in their head that dealerships shouldn't make money and if they are they're screwing you.