Auto Estrogen

Don’t like going to dealerships? I understand. Many women don’t. But you need a car so what can you do about it? There are some alternatives that you might consider. In our latest segment of Auto Estrogen Live, our extended radio version of our blog, I discuss several considerations to help you stay off the dealership lot.

Here’s a list along with a podcast of the show for you to listen to:

1. Shop online- Make your car buying experience less frustrating and more convenient by spending more time online before going into the dealership.

2. Consider an Auto Broker- Consultants that help you buy a new or used car or help you get into a lease. These individuals can save you time, money and frustration if you can find a really good one.

3. Buy Private Party - Talk to friends and relatives, take a drive around your community,
and look in the classifieds of your paper. There are always individuals looking to sale a car and you can often get better deals shopping this way than with the dealership.

4. Visit a car auction - Auto auctions are interesting and exciting ways to purchase a car. A unique experience that has to be carefully facilitated.

If you’re the parent of a teenager, there will come a day when you have to address the issue of driving. When that day comes, you will begin to consider things like: when should they get their driver’s license, are they ready to be on the road, can they handle a car, do they need a car, so forth and so on.

For the teen it’s one of the most exciting times in their life. It symbolizes maturity and basically says to the world ‘I’m trustworthy, so much so that I’ve been given the keys to a car.’ The problem is teens don’t always do so well when it comes to driving. Statistically speaking, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, accounting for 36% of all deaths in this age group, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). Of course there are methods to counteract these statistics, safe driving courses for one. And we can’t lump all teenagers in a category of irresponsibilty. As a matter of fact, for many parents, putting a teen behind the wheel is a welcome relief, freeing up schedules of chauffeuring to and from practices, ballet classes, sporting events, work, and the like.

Whatever stance you happen to take, there’s still the inevitable act of buying that first car and I wondered what specific considerations a woman might have when it came to purchasing that first car for a teen. It just so happens that a good friend of mine is preparing to purchase a car for her daughter. She gave me a little synopsis of how things are going, some of the decisions they’ve made and just how harmonious the idea of car buying for teens might or might not be.

1. They’ve opted for a cash purchase on a used car.

2. Although her daughter had originally saved some money towards the car, she’s since spent the money and now the parents will be making the purchase, while her daughter will be responsible for her own gas money — no money, no gas, no driving.

3. Insurance is a concern as it will increase their premiums by upwards of $3,000 annually, so they will look into insuring her separately.

4. It seems that both my friend and her daugher are quite ready to move things along, although her husband is moving very slowly. According to her, the only car that pleases him thus far is a Toyota. Her daugher researched almost 200 cars and he wasn’t pleased with any of them.

5. Her goal is to have a car by the end of the year. At this point, her daugher doesn’t care what model or color, just a reasonable sized car, with good gas mileage, that’s a two or four door automatic.

As I inquired about how things were going, she did let on that the whole car thing is now a very sore spot at the house. So to answer my own question, Do Teen Driver’s Cause Havoc in the Home? Looks like the answer is no, it’s the teen father’s that do!

Stay tuned for the article, Things to Consider When Purchasing a Car for a Teen

Auto Estrogen goes live today. I just taped the first show of Auto Estrogen Live! We’ll be talking about everything automotive as it relates to women and their cars as an extension to our blog. You can check it out here www.blogtalkradio.com/auto-estrogen

Our introductory show covered a few of the mistakes that I made when I was shopping for my car several years ago. We have some exciting ideas, topics and speakers for the fututre as we help you manage your life as a woman on the road.

So if you’d like to hear about car buying and maintenance in addition to reading about it, then by all means subscribe.

Listen to our Introductory Show:

In a recent appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, Suze Orman discussed what she knows best — Money. With an audience full of women, Suze discussed credit, debt, investing and more. This newfound awareness of women and their money is an interesting one, so much so that Orman dedicated a whole book to the subject. In it she states, Women have been thrust into an entirely new relationship with money that is profoundly different from anything we have ever encountered before. The shifting roles of women at home and at work have dramatically changed where and how money interacts with a woman’s life.

I’ll say it has, take a look at some of these statistics:
- Women control $7 trillion in consumer and business spending and make over $1 trillion dollars annually
- Sixty percent of adult women in America work outside the home and thirty percent of married women now out-earn their husbands.
- Over the past thirty years, women’s income has soared a dramatic 63 percent.
- Women bring in half or more of the income in the majority of U.S. households.
- Women account for more than 50 percent of all stock ownership in the United States.

Women have reached a time in our society where they are much more powerful when it comes to finances. Over the last several years I’ve received numerous invitations to dinners and lunches hosted by financial institutions focusing on women and money.

Why all the sudden interest and attention? Well, if the stats didn’t give you a clear answer, there’s also the fact that women are living longer (twice that of men) and divorce rates continue to climb so at some point and time in her life, a women will have to manage her own money. And we obviously need some help. With all this money and power, women can still find it all a bit intimidating. During her appearance on Oprah, Orman stated that women often don’t trust themselves when it comes to money. Her advice: Women should trust themselves more than they trust others.

There is an interesting relationship between women and money and when you add additional components to the equation, buying a car for instance, things become even more complex. Why don’t we trust ourselves when it comes to cars and money? Why haven’t we taken more interest when it comes to investing, financing and cars?

Now that we have, what can we do? How do we get the knowledge, one Oprah audience member asked? Well for one, we have to get educated. Purchasing Orman’s book is just one way to get started, among others.

So what about you? What will you do?

It’s time for Halloween and there are thousands of kids (and adults) ready to put on scary masks, costumes and makeup, visit haunted houses and go from door to door, yelling, Trick or Treat. Kids love the sweet candy treats they get going from door to door and the scary tricks that hid behind corners in dark rooms filled with ghostly goblins, monsters and witches. And even adults like a good scare every now and then, but not when it comes to car buying.

The idea of buying a shiny new car can quickly go from treat to trick when things go badly at the dealership. Here’s a list of some of the scary things that can happen at the dealership.

Scary List of Auto Dealer Experiences:
1. I ended up with two car notes! Eeek. Talk about scary, but it happened. This scenario played itself out after the dealership supposedly bought the customer’s trade-in. Come to find out they had not. In this case, the customer ended up paying for a new car as well as the one she already had. Ouch! Read more of this story.

2. 56-year-old woman tackled by salesman. Are you kidding me?! It’s true according to a posting on My Dealer Stories. Apparently, the dealership couldn’t figure out whether they wanted to take the customer’s cash or not so when she got up to leave the salesman tackled her. Now that’s scary!

3. Car dealership steals customer’s vehicle. If you haven’t seen this story floating around you absolutely have to check it out. Can you imagine going to bed with your car in your driveway then getting up and finding it gone, by the very people that sold it to you in the first place?! Watch the video:

Car-Buy-Her loves Her Skirt . . . .Skirt!Magazine, that is. The self described magazine is all about women . . . their work, play, families, creativity, style, health and wealth, bodies and souls. Skirt! Is an attitude . . . spirited, independent, outspoken, serious, playful and irreverent, sometimes controversial, always passionate. Ahhh . . . the same quintessential qualities of a Car-Buy-Her, a woman that is informed, in control, and ready to buy. Car-Buy-Her’s are empowered through information and education and Skirt!Magazine is filled with information, articles, and wonderfully feminine messages and editorials each month.

Skirt!Magazine teamed up recently with Car-Buy-Her during our Fall (2nd) Auto Clinic for Women. Ladies attending the auto clinic not only received a wealth of great automotive information but each participant went home with a fun-filled Skirt! Goody Bag including a personalized hanger for Her Skirt!

There’s value in education. When you know better, you do better they say and that goes for car buying as well. So I was just sitting here thinking how challenging things were for me 3 years ago when I was trying to find a car. I didn’t know what kind of car I wanted to drive and what kind of car I needed. I didn’t know where to go or what to do because I really didn’t know anything about buying a car. Now I know so much more about car buying and I have such a better understanding of the process. I planned on purchasing used — hey, that’s something I knew, but outside of that if I knew then what I know now . . .

- I could have saved myself two months of frustration. Looking for a car should be a fun experience and can be when you don’t have an immediate need.

- I would have planned and prepared a lot better by looking around and visiting dealerships before I really needed them.

- I would have had a better understanding of what I wanted and needed in a car (for example, I’d be driving a four door instead of a two door, only a recent discovery that I’m a four-door kind of gal).

- I would have explored more options because I would have had the time to do so.

Dealerships we’ve talked to love the idea of marketing more effectively to women, eg. as we see it “becoming more woman friendly”. Some even believe in these programs (yes, I’m quoting).

In a nutshell, dealerships know how important women consumers are to their bottom line and they do want your business, most of them anyway. They just don’t want to invest to get it.

Dealerships think it’s perfectly okay to work with someone, a consultant, broker or entity of sorts to generate leads — ummm. You see where I’m going? In many instances the broker is then paid off the said. In other words, when you buy they get paid.

Just for the record Car-Buy-Her is not a brokering company. We don’t recommend women to dealerships and then get paid off the sale. As a matter of fact, we’re not recommending dealerships unless they go through our evaluation program, a fee-based program in which we learn something about that dealership, how they operate and work with their customers, women in particular. There are just too many horror stories from women about purchasing cars to do things any other way.

In my opinion, dealers should welcome the opportunity for evaluation, to get trained and to learn how to do things better. An opportunity that allows them to see if they come even close to meeting the standards of our Woman-Friendly criteria.

Are auto dealers resistant to becoming women friendly or are they just resistent to anything that doesn’t line up with their male-defined traditional notion of what does and does not work when it comes to women in their dealership?

Auto repair is a chore, no matter how you look at it:
- It takes time out of your day
- It takes money out of your pocket and
- There’s nothing fun about it

It is a fact of life, however, if you happen to own a car. It’s an absolute, so the best thing to do is to prepare. The problem is, you never really know what’s going to go wrong. There are so many possibilities, some minor and only slightly burdensome, others major and total disruptions. Take the increasingly louder noise I heard the other day on my way to a conference. “Oh no, is that my car I thought?” After turning down the radio and listening intently, I discovered that oh yeah, it was me. My only desire at that moment was to make it to the parking lot without any problems. I did. And then . . . well, I went on my way, along with my day, almost completely forgetting the little noise that troubled me on the way to the conference.

Once I returned to my car, it hit me, an instant reminder. I had problems turning the steering wheel. So there I was — in car maintenance hell — what could be wrong? Is it a minor or a major?

I got on the phone, called my auto service and arranged for a tow. One thing I knew. I would not be left on the side of the road!

Fast forward three days later, yep, the auto shop was closed, it just happened to be a weekend and so my poor car had to sit by idle over the weekend before she (my car) could get some relief. The verdict —- a minor (that’s when your bill is under $500 ).

So here’s what I decided. As women we have to take better care of our cars. And we have to do it, not someone else. At our women’s auto clinic back in April, our female automotive mechanic told us something that was very enlightening. She said that we were the experts when it comes to car maintenance — not her. Wow! Talk about power. How revealing it was to find that out. Although we might not be the technical experts, we are indeed experts. Why? We’re the ones driving the car on a daily basis and we’re the ones that know when something feels funny, sounds funny, or runs funny. We just have to do a better job when it comes to descriptions (I’ll share more on this in another blog).

Being a Car-Buy-Her is not about being an automotive expert; it’s about becoming informed and empowered when it comes to your car, it’s care and it’s maintenance. We can do that by being better stewards of observation. By taking notes and listening to the heartbeat of the vehicle we’re in. And then by putting those that we entrust our beloved to, to meet the standards in which we’ve set.

The ladies packed the room, listened intently and hurled questioned such as: What do you think of auctions? What about auto dealers that remove the haggle from car buying? How do you get your credit score? How often should you get your transmission checked? How often should you service your vehicle? Is it true that car color raises your insurance? These very engaged ladies were participants of Car-Buy-Her’s 1st auto clinic for women What Men Don’t Want You to Know: Auto Buying and Maintenance Clinic for Women, held this month in conjunction with the Car Care Council’s National Car Care Month.

Ladies attending the clinic shared car stories and chocolate; laughter and camaraderie as a panel of female automotive experts provided information and insight on car buying, auto financing, auto insurance, and auto maintenance.

“I had loads of fun and was very enlightened by the knowledge of all of the speakers. I took away great information to share with my policyholders both present and future, says Sheri Robinson of Triple AAA Club South. “This was a great clinic. I have a page full of notes”, stated Pamela Coman.

The three-hour clinic was the first of its kind held by Car-Buy-Her and the first comprehensive clinic for women covering all-things automotive.

“This was our first automotive clinic and it was hugely successful and a confirmation of the need for this service. We are already in talks with women’s groups, Parks & Recreation departments, and credit unions about hosting additional clinics. Educating women is one of our primary goals,” states Sheronde Glover, Car-Buy-Her founder and the coordinator, organizer, and developer of the auto clinic.

All ladies attending the clinic received a certificate of achievement for their participation and recognition as an official, Car-Buy-Her, a woman that is informed, in control, and ready to buy.

For more information on how to request this clinic, attend this group or become a sponsor, visit our website at http://www.car-buy-her.com.