Scott: Lease or Buy?

Math 1030 Project

 

Leasing a car can be a little more intimidating than buying because of the seeming complexity of its costs.  Some may also shy away from leasing because at the end of the leasing period the vehicle is returned and the leaser has nothing to show for the money he or she invested.  These apparent difficulties, however, may scare car-owners away whom, if they had a better understanding of the costs and financial implications of leasing, might find it to be a sound investment.

The first number to consider when leasing is the MSRP or Manufacturer Recommended Retail Price (leaseguide.com).  The MSRP of our 2008 Volkswagen Passat is $29,100 which represents the full price if you were to purchase the car outright (internetautoguide.com).  Fortunately, the MSRP is almost always negotiable so for our calculations, we’re going to assume the dealer has been talked down to $27,000.  In 48 months it will cost an estimated $13,013.31 less, selling for only $12,986.69 (NCBuy.com/auto).  The amount vehicles decrease in value over time is called depreciation and the new lowered selling price is called residual value (leaseguide.com).  So we see by taking the current MSRP and subtracting the estimated residual value…

 

$27000.00 (MSRP) – $12986.69 (residual) = $13013.31 (depreciation)

 

…we get the depreciation of the car over 48 months.  This number is important because during the lease, what you’re paying for is the estimated depreciation of the vehicle during that period of time. 

            Some leases will have a down payment.  The lease offered at Strong Volkswagen in Salt Lake City has no down payment so we’ll go with that (strongvw.com).  There will however be a title and registration fee of approximately $600 for a 2008 Passat which will be rolled into the monthly payments.  If we add that to the depreciation…

 

            $600.00 (title and registration) + $13013.31 (depreciation) = $13613.31

 

…we get the total amount that will be paid over the whole period of the loan.

            Monthly payments for all leases are subject to sales tax which, for Salt Lake County, Utah, is currently 6.8% (tax.utah.gov).

            Now that we have all our variables defined all our variables, we can calculate our monthly payments.  Leases are usually paid off in the same manner as installment loans so we will use the loan payment formula which will give us a constant amount to be paid each month.  The formula is as follows.

   ___P X (APR/n)______                                                      (-nY)

PMT    =    [1 – (1 + APR/n)      ]

 

PMT    =    regular payment

P          =    amount to be paid

APR    =    annual percentage rate (sales tax rate)

n          =    number of payment periods per year

Y         =    lease term in years

When we plug in the numbers it gives us

 

                          __13613.31 X (0.068/12)___           

                                                              (-12 * 4)

PMT    =      [1 – (1 + 0.068/12)          ]

  

               __13613.31 X (0.00567)___

                                           (-48)

            =      [1 – (1.00567)      ]

  

               __77.14209__

            =      0.23756

 

           

            =  $324.7268  monthly payment

  

One of the advantages of leasing over taking out a loan to buy is lower monthly payments.  Buyers pay more so they can own the vehicle at the end of the pay period, leaving them with equity.  If they were to resell their vehicle right after paying it off, however, they would lose the same amount of money the leaser paid during their lease.  The longer they wait to sell the car, the more money they lose on the investment until it breaks down completely and yields negligible returns.  The cost of repairs for owners adds expenses that leasers don’t have to deal with.

            When considering whether to lease or buy, one must keep in mind that they will lose money no matter what, in the long run.

            For college students such as myself, the quality of the vehicle is of much less importance than it’s ability to get me from point A to point B.  Therefore, buying a really old hippy van for a couple thousand bucks will always be more financially viable than leasing.

Brooke: Seashore

Is this descriptive enough? Does it employ all of the 5 senses? Hopefully! Because that was the assignment. I had fun with it. This is a loose description of what the beaches are like in Arica:

—

The sand gave way beneath her feet, pouring over her toes and dusting her ankles. It was a light gray color. Not white. Not a perfect burnt yellow. Gray–like a dry stretch of cement with an uneven peppering of black.

This beach was far from the tropical dream. The coast was wide and flat, with little vegetation and certainly no exotic palm trees or hibiscus bushes lining the sand. Greenish sea foam bubbled up during high tide and left a frothy residue along the shore, dragging with it stray twigs and rocks and little pieces of shell and fishing line.

It didn’t smell like a tropical dream either. No coconut oil, or sunscreen, or sweet papaya juice. It stank. Of salt, and fish and bird droppings. Beachgoers were constantly scanning the sky warily–making sure not to sit below the rowdy flocks of gulls circling above. The air was gritty and thick with salt, too. And breathing in, she could taste the ocean. It filled her mouth, made her tongue curl with its briny punch.

The wind blew in wildly from the west and whipped at the edges of her clothing, wrenched her hair from its ponytail holder. After a few times she stopped fighting it, and let the loose strands fly up and over her face–let the wind create a tangled halo of hair around her head. She felt like Medusa.

In the winter the waves were too big for swimming, the waters too cool. Families brought blankets and sat on them quickly, all at once (before they caught in the wind and blew away).

There was something soothing about it, quiet and serene. The subtle stink of fish, the muted gray sand blending with the muted gray sky. She sat near, but not next to the huddling families and listened. Listened to the waves smacking and the gulls squawking, listened to the soft lullaby of the ocean shore.

Brooke: Show and Tell

This is late. But I wanted to share the poem we are doing our final project on for my Film 112 class. We are creating a 3-minute photo montage thing based on this poem by Billy Collins. I reallllly like it and am excited about the project:

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Scott: Sanctuary

Phil was relieved when professor Bains ended class early.  He quickly slid into the bathroom, selecting the handicap stall on the end.  Although the bottom foot or so exposed his legs and virtually all sounds emitted could be heard throughout the bathroom and beyond, Phil considered that stall a sanctuary.  He had every inch of graffitti memorized.  Sometimes he would just sit.  Just sit and read.  Away from the conversations that both delighted and tortured him.

Phil graduated from high school one year early – not early enough to be the subject of awe, but just early enough to not get most dirty jokes at Freshman parties.  He felt like the belly-button lint of his generation.  And so he nestled into this belly-button of a town and spent the last three years undoing the extra-credit he did in high school.  Philip was now a year behind with no end in sight.

He took this opportunity to retrace the fading inscriptions on his inner thighs.  In black ink they read “self is an illusion” and “precisely ambiguous” where no one could ever see; the only two truths he had learned from college thus far.     

Brooke: Gifts That Won’t Fail!

Does a loved one have a birthday approaching? Perhaps it is a friend’s bar mitzvah or a relative’s graduation.
Whatever the occasion, here are a few wonderful and original gift ideas to contemplate.

Good Gift Ideas

1. Hand-made mini doll-house with small wooden children inside (names: Clover, River, Oak Tree and Brooklet)
2. Lint roller
3. Metal canteen engraved with initials (the gift that says: I don’t want you to die of dehydration if you ever get lost in the desert!)
4. Painted light bulb
5. Colored rice in variously shaped glass containers
6. Moth collection (dried and pinned)
7. A paperweight (AKA anything heavy: a stone, broken lamp, etc)
8. Ant farm

Brooke: Variations on a Theme

The summer days felt endless, they blazed up and melted together-sticky and uncomfortable. Elliot hated everything about them. There was too much daylight, too much time, too much of that muggy Southern heat, and far too many bugs. The bushes shook with the constant low buzzing of the jar flies and Elliot always cringed as he scooted past them, averting his gaze from their long wax-paper wings and bulging black eyeballs.

Summer meant too many hours feeling cooped up. Too much time listening to Eliza and Meredith argue over who had the cuter cut-offs or who went to the better pool party, and mom humming idly all the while as she chopped up zucchini–like they weren’t making any racket at all. Too much of Him drinking on the porch, slamming screen doors, starting up the truck with long noisy sputters and driving off for hours at a time.

Elliot much preferred the refuge of Fall. The slight chill in the air, the back-to-school scuttle, the fresh notebooks and clean classrooms. The crispness, the quiet–far from his hot, leaning house. Far from Meredith and Eliza who went to Jackson Creek Junior High now. Far from his mother’s zucchini, or the constant dull buzzing of the vacuum (like the jar flies). She was always cleaning, always humming. And most of all, far from Him.

But the sad truth, Elliot discovered, was that summer was an inevitable, unavoidable season–and he simply had to learn to suck it up and bear it. When he couldn’t escape to a quiet classroom, when he couldn’t find refuge in fall–he found it in the attic.

Father told him not to go up there once. He said the floorboards were weak. He said they weren’t strong enough to support some snot-nosed little boy stomping all over them. But what did He know? He just didn’t want Elliot to find all the old boxes stuffed with those nasty magazines of his. Well, he’d found them. And a lot more. They were lodged in between piles of yellowing bank records and the tottering heap of Grandma Lois’s furniture. Elliot made a hobby of unearthing these ancient family relics–he picked through the mess carefully, counting each item as a mini discovery.

Scott: Adventure

Today I didn’t have time to post because I joined a commune of nerds and hippies who enjoy a symbiotic existence; the hippies make the nerds organic burritos as they play video games powered by solar panels.  It was good old-fashioned sustainable fun!

Brooke: Painted Angels

When Elliot was young he had visions of painted angels–like the ones he found on dusty canvases in the attic. Most of them were unfinished; roughly sketched lines with dabs of color only in their cheeks and wings. His mother was the artist. The angels had been her hobby at one time–her escape. They had perfectly folded wings, gentle hands, and white flowing robes like smoke billowing around their naked feet. Sometimes there were no wings. Just a warm glow, healthy flushed white skin stretched over slight and elegant frames that stood suspended like magic in midair.

Elliot was surprised when he discovered his mother had made them. He found them there in the attic, tucked away like a treasure hidden and forgotten and thought: Michelangelo! Da Vinci! Raphael!

Then he noticed etched faintly in the corners of each of them 3 delicate letters: ALB–Abigail Larson Blythe. No Michelangelo. Just mom.

Mom who used to paint angels until life got in the way. Until the kids came and so did the late nights and the endless chauffeuring and the meetings and the dishes and the doctor’s appointments. After that the angels were stacked up together and stowed away with grandma Lois’s old furniture and boxes of family records. They were unfinished projects, unfit to hang on any wall or in any gallery. Stacked away and forgotten.

But Elliot found them; he traced their rough outlines with his fingers, and made them his own. Elliot found them when he went to the attic to hide.

Scott: Ashok

Catching Houdini the Rabbit was anti-climactic.  Martha saw him eating some Cherios on the kitchen floor one morning and decided to start a conversation.

“So… nice weather, huh?” she said in her most nonthreatening voice.

“My mom can smell storms coming an hour away… I bet you can smell ‘em, what, two hours away?”

Houdini looked up from his meal and wiggled his nose.

“Wow, four whole hours in advance?!  You should work for the weather channel.”

They went on to discuss politics and the pros and cons of marshmellows.  Then Martha picked him up and put him in a box without a struggle.  Now it was time to round up the gang.

She got out her seasoned violin from its case and played a familiar snippet from Robin Hood the musical that had somehow become the cattle call for Martha’s posse of third-graders.  All the walls inside the apartment building were paper-thin and at times seemed to have an amplifying effect on various instruments and especially “personal” sounds.  The four exterior walls, in contrast, were dungeon-thick – giving the occupants the feeling of living in the improvized honey-comb of a swarm of bees who were forced to settle in a man-made structure.  It was determined years prior that such an unfortunate acoustic situation would allow for only one resident musician.  For about a week the hive buzzed with impromptu auditions.  Martha won and so the cry of her violin now wrang out unimpeded.

Darwin answered first.  He ran through the front door and was immediately blinded by the orange sunset flooding in through the window, obviously suffering from a post-nap hang-over.  A wave, a “Hey” and a plop on the living room chair.

Roger was next.  He strutted in with a look of forced indifference, brandishing a protuberant bulge in his right pocket.

“Hi Roger.  Watcha got there?”

“Oh…just a walky-talky,” he said, struggling to take it out with some degree of proficeincy.

“That’s cool.  Hey, when you talk to people with that they can say ‘Roger that Roger’” Martha observed.

“I already know that” Roger informed her.

Martha had baby-sat the three since they were toddlers.  She didn’t really need the five-dollars-an-hour anymore.  She continued spending time with them because they were, quite simply, cool.  At least she recognized the possibility for genuine coolness, an attribute that she believed comes naturally at birth and is systematically rooted out of us all.  Her sacred duty was to preserve this essence, or at least get a better understanding of how it is destroyed.

Ashok was always last.  Martha may very well have lost interest in the bunch if it weren’t for this most peculiar boy.   

Brooke: Milk Baths

Edgar never bought milk at noon. It was one of his unwavering rules. The curious young man would stand every day outside the store until at least 12:15 before he was willing to enter.

Penny Jenkins, on the other hand, bought milk every day at noon. It was an unwavering routine. And not only one gallon, but always three at a time.

Edgar was a keen strategist–his no-milk-at-noon policy stemmed from his careful avoidance of Ms. Penny Jenkins. He calculated his daily entrance into the grocery store to correspond directly with Penny’s exit.

You see, the first and last time he ever bought milk at noon, he embarrassed himself terribly and vowed he would never do it again.

This unfortunate occasion had also been carefully thought-out (Edgar was a strategist in every respect). He had not always avoided Penny Jenkins. In fact, he spent many years of his life strategically placing himself in her presence. On this particular day, Edgar placed himself (very strategically) in the dairy aisle at 12:00 precisely. When Penny walked in, he straightened his shirt, and mustered up his best smile-prepared to employ his finest polite-conversation skills. Unfortunately, Penny Jenkins in her bright yellow sundress left him positively dumbstruck. She leaned down and grabbed her three gallons of milk so quickly (and with such little notice of Edgar) that all he managed to stammer before she walked away was-”Hello Ms. Penny why do you buy so much milk all the time?”

With this Penny Jenkins swung around, milk jugs balanced in her arms.

“You really wanna know?” She asked, stepping forward.

Edgar gulped and nodded. A playful smile played on Penny’s lips and she leaned forward, so close.

“Milk baths.” She almost whispered.

“Milk baths?” Edgar asked.

“Milk baths. For smoother skin.”

Then she flounced away to the checkout counter, bought her milk and left.

Edgar bought 3 gallons of milk that day, and tried taking a milk bath in hopes he would have silky smooth skin.

All it managed to do was make him smell funny.