Couple Money » Cars and Road Trips

May Fuel Challenge Check-In #2

Elle — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:45:46 +0000

It’s another Monday, so it’s time for me to check in with my own progress with the Fuel King/Queen Challenge. I had a fuel up this week and it wasn’t pretty – I got 22.8 miles per gallon this tank. Ouch! I have got to get back to getting 28-30 miles per gallon.

I’ve been doing a lot of city driving and the results show – I got to change up my driving habits, quick. Here are a few things I’ll be working on when driving with this tank:

Be consistent with my driving speed. When I’m driving to the other side of town I tend to get stuck on Capital Blvd traffic. That usually means lots of lights and bad driving. I’ll try out different routes to see if that helps.
Keep my car light.
Be a part of a carpool. I’ll try to split car trips more with friends.
Combine errands to minimize unnecessary trips. I’m guilty of this during the weekends when I’m driving the city. I’ll work on doing one trip a day and taking care of several activities.

I’m hoping you’re doing better with your fuel-ups! If not, what do you plan on changing up for this tank?

If you’re interested in tracking your gas mileage and you don’t want to use Fuelly, here are some free spreadsheets I found online:

Angry Millionaire is on a Streak

Martilyo from Angry Millionaire has been getting some rather good consistent results from his Honda Civic. It has over 200k miles on it, but it’s a fine machine. Martilyo is getting over 32 miles per gallon with the fuel-ups.

Thoughts on the Fuel Challenge

I’d love to hear from you and your challenge. Please remember to leave your progress in the comments below – it’s encouraging and a way for us to see how each other is doing. If you have any tips that you’ve used please share them as well.

Photo Credit

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May Fuel Challenge Check-In #1

Elle — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:46:11 +0000

It’s Monday, so it’s time for me to check in with my own progress with the Fuel King/Queen Challenge. I started this Challenge as a way to save some money to pay off the student loan faster. Now, in just a few days of taking the challenge I’m embracing the friendly competitiveness of it.

Please remember to leave your progress in the comments below – it’s encouraging and a way for us to see how each other is doing. If you have any tips that you’ve used (not just what you’ve read), please share them as well. I’ll be compiling them into a resource for other people to use. It’ll be nice to have challenge inspire others with their driving.

Fuelly – Easy and Free

I’m using Fuelly to keep track of the miles I’ve driven and the money I’ve spent – it’s easy and it’s free (awsome combo!). Fuelly also has an app so you can immediately update your car’s records right there at the gas pump. If you want to follow my progress in real-time, look for ElleCMB on the site.

As of my last fuel-up I’ve been averaging 28.9 miles per gallon. Not bad, but not great. I’ve been driving more around city with the last tank and I’ve been in lots of stop and go traffic. Becoming more aware of upcoming trafiic has helped immensely.

I also see some parallels with keeping track of money – the more aware I am with my driving habits, the better I am with the car’s mileage. Hopefully this month will help me acquire some better driving habits and keep my fuel-ups less frequent.

Angry Millionaire = Happy Driver

Congrats go to Martilyo from Angry Millionaire this week! He’s managed to get a little over 32 mpg on his Honda Civic. That’s wonderful and motivating. It looks like I have to step it up and get my mileage higher.

Thoughts on the Fuel Challenge

Off to a good start, but I’ll be working hard to making this tank last. I’d love to hear from you. How’s your progress so far with the Fuel Challenge? Have you noticed an improvement?

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May’s Fuel King/Queen Challenge

Elle — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:00:39 +0000

I’m launching a Fuel King/Queen Challenge here on Couple Money and My Financial Reviews this month! With summer approaching, I thought it would be nice to have a month long challenge to encourage one another to save money in a big way.

I also thought it would be nice to have a challenge that could help others save money over the long haul, so this month’s challenge is a friendly competition to improve gas mileage with the cars we drive.

Of course having some prizes makes challenges a bit more fun!

Fuel Challenge – Money or Amazon Giftcards

We’re giving away money (via paypal) or Amazon gift cards to 3 winners, divided up by type of car driven. Right now the prizes are:

$75 thru Paypal or Amazon Gift card for sedan/coupe drivers (I’m grateful that Improve Yourself Daily is helping out and adding $25 to the prize pot!)
$50 thru Paypal or Amazon Gift card for SUV/truck drivers
$25 thru Paypal or Amazon Gift card for hybrid car drivers (Thanks to Crystal at Budgeting In the Fun Stuff for sponsoring this prize!)

Signing Up For the Challenge

If you’re as excited as I am, please join us for a chance to win.

If you’re signing up for the sedan/coupe drivers challenge, please follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already.
If you’re signing up for the SUV/truck or hybrid challenge, then please follow My Financial Reviews on Twitter.

No matter which challenge you take, please keep your receipts and record your gas mileage with every fill-up either on Couple Money or on My Financial Reviews, depending on which challenge you take. simply leave a comment on today’s challenge post on Mondays’ posts which will be sharing everyone’s progress and tips.

I’m using Fuelly for this challenge, so if you want to follow me, my user name on the site is ElleCMB.

The contest ends May 31, 2012 (11:59 PM Eastern). You must be 18 or over to qualify for the prize. If you don’t have a Paypal account, you will be sent an Amazon GiftCard. This contest is open to U.S. and Canadian readers. Please keep your gas receipts to verify mileage.

Thoughts on Fuel Chllenge

Best wishes to all who sign up. Even though not everyone can win the prizes, all of us can save a bit of money this month. What are your goals for this challenge?

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Rebuilding the Car Fund

Elle — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:03:54 +0000

Now that we bought our family car, it’s time to decide the next step with the remaining cars. We love them both, but we can only keep one. Which one will we sell? How will we rebuild the car fund?

Which Car Will We Sell?

Since we bought our car through Craigslist, we didn’t trade in one of the cars we currently have. They are both 12+ year old cars and their age is starting to show. Fortunately it doesn’t appear that either need big repairs.

One of the cars is a Celica – fun ride for sure plus it has good gas mileage (30 mpg). It’s mainly used as my husband’s commuting car. The Jetta is a more family friendly car, but with the Accord, do we need another sedan, especially one with so-so mpg (around 25 lately)?

To determine which car we need to sell, we’ll go to the mechanics and get both cars checked out. The Jetta needs to get it state inspection this month anyways, so I’ll ask the shop to go over the car to make sure everything is in good order. My husband will see if his car is in good shape as well.

We’ll use the mechanics’ assessments to get an idea of which one would be better to sell off.

How Will We Rebuild Our Car Fund?

As you may have guessed, the money we receive from the car sale will boost the car fund. However we will also be regularly depositing money into it for the next car. With the focus on paying off the student loan, the deposits will be smaller than we had recently been making.

We use ING Direct to stash our savings and have a sub account to help us keep track of our progress.

Thoughts on Rebuilding the Car Fund

I’d like to hear from you about selling a car. Have you had to sell one of your old cars recently? Do you have any tips on how to get the best deal?

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Buying a Car from a Private Seller in North Carolina

Elle — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:00:39 +0000

We bought our family sedan, a Honda Accord, earlier this week (hence the guest post yesterday) and we’ve been getting everything done.

I want to cover the process of buying a car from a private seller in North Carolina. Hopefully it’ll help those looking at finding a deal on a car on Craigslist.

Finding Out What North Carolina DMV Needed

Once the offer was accepted, the next morning I called the NC DMV to see what we needed to get for the car to be properly registered.

Vehicle Title – signed by the seller(s) and buyer(s)-> Must be notarized
Title Application
Odometer Disclosure (if car is 10 or less)
Declaration of Eligible Risk

If there was a lien on the car we would’ve needed a lien release.

My question for the customer service representative is if we can drive home without tags and then register it the next morning. Since we were buying car late in the afternoon, we were worried that DMV would be closed by the time we finished everything.

She said no; basically in North Carolina there is no temporary tag to put on the car. I prefer Virginia’s way of doing things – giving buyers 3 day temporary tags to get everything squared away. (However it turned out to not be a big deal since we just made it in for the plates.)

Adding the Car to Our Insurance

It was surprisingly simple to add the car to our auto insurance policy. In total it took 20 minutes to give them the data and for them to get the new insurance cards emailed to us for printing.

I also discovered that the Accord is actually a good deal with insurance. The premium for the car is about the same as our cars, which are considerably older.

Buying the Car

We met the seller at our local branch and get checks made out in her name. (Thank you Wells Fargo for charging us to access our money!) The title was signed and notarized. All that was left was getting the old plates off. That proved the most difficult part. It took about half an hour.

We then rushed over to the local DMV office to get the plates for the car. We got there about 10 minutes before they closed. Fortunately we had everything we needed and in 15 minutes the process was over. We screwed on the plates and we were good to go.

Thoughts on Buying a Car in North Carolina

How about you? Are you planning on a buying a car this year? How many of you are buying from a private seller? How many of you are in North Carolina?

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