In our last 2 VidCasts, we walked through the 7-point car buying process and building decision confidence. In today’s vidcast, I highlight several best practices to help supercharge your car buying experience. These best practices will add to your decision confidence.
Car buying is surprisingly complex, Auto buying has many criteria and deciding what is important to you. Plus there are 1,000s of potential alternatives and financing questions. Then, negotiating with the salesperson adds even more spice. Car buying is one of many important life decisions benefiting from a consistent, repeatable decision process!
Earlier, we discussed helpful resources including choice architecture tools like:
We also went through lenders, lenders, and car data aggregators, plus my book and other content.
As a recommendation, we suggest you first go through the entire process without exploring the details. The important first step to car-buying success is building a mental map of the entire car-buying decision process. Once you get a feel for the forest, it will make more sense to learn about each tree.... or, in this case, the individual steps of the car-buying process. Loading the smartphone app we recommended is also helpful at this point. It is good to start familiarizing yourself with the app and other resources before jumping into the car-buying model. Also, please refer back to this vidcast and the website materials often. Some concepts may make more sense after you get some hands-on experience.
In the video, I showcase one of my happy car-buying friends! She used my book and the smartphone tools to make a GREAT car-buying decision!
My book, Making Choices, Making Money, is full of suggestions and provides smartphone tools to help you buy a car.
About the author: Jeff Hulett is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM. Today, Jeff is an executive with the Definitive Companies. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his new book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions -- at jeffhulett.com.
A fast, confidence-inspiring car decision is very doable. I look forward to sharing. Check out this and other Vidcasts to get a taste of the best decision process.