Selling a car

Have you ever sold a car on your own? I have, and it's not a lot of fun. A few weeks ago, I decided to buy another Toyota Prius. I had a Prius for about 5 years starting in 2006 before I had the temptation to buy a big sports sedan with lots of horsepower. In my brilliant thinking, I forgot to consider one thing...the cost to keep the darn thing on the road. Higher insurance, maintenance costs, and especially fuel costs were all a lot higher. Premium gas...are you kidding me??? With my old Prius, I was used to 45mpg with regular gas. Plus, in the 5 years that I owned it, NOTHING went wrong. 72K miles and not even a brake job. All I paid for were oil changes and a service every 15K. With my new sports sedan, that dropped to 21mpg. YIKES! I started dreading my weekly visits to the gas station. And I started missing the Prius.

So, after thinking it over, I decided to get another Prius, a late model used one,  AND to save money, I thought "Why not sell the sports sedan on my own?!" I had sold other cars on my own, but never one with a price tag as high as this one.  My ad went in on Craigslist and the wait was on. I waited....and waited....and waited some more. See, that's the problem with selling a car by yourself, you do a lot of waiting. Maybe I've priced it too high? Maybe the photos I took weren't as good as they could be? It doesn't matter what it is, if the phone isn't ringing, that's not a good thing.

One other problem I neglected to consider...borrowing money is still not as easy as it used to be. So for people to consider my car, most would need some sort of loan. And it might be hard to obtain. Yes, another complication.

So after two weeks, and 1 phone call, I'm now at the crossroads of debating whether to just sell the car wholesale to a dealer. Part of me wants to do just that. But the other part of me wants to wait...and wait...and wait......some more. How does the Tom Petty song go?  "...the waiting is the hardest part."  Tom speaks the truth.

Will Johnson