The simple answer is don’t, usually you are simply wholesaling your car, meaning you are leaving it to a retailer to sell your car to the final user. Then rightfully the seller deserves to make a profit and again simply put that profit would have been yours had you sold it. Studies have proven time and again that used car buyers pay more for cars when purchased from the original owner.  But this is not always the case and sometimes, I do realize, it’s not practical and some folks hate to sell things.

So if I am going to trade, how do I make sure I don’t get taken? It’s really not that hard, but first we need to talk about the fabled Over-Allowance.

Over-allowance is a way some car dealers will show you more for your car while leaving their car at a higher price. Sometimes to show more than you owe and others to help you feel better about your cars value.

Example: If I am selling you a car and the sticker price is $10,000, I may normally discount that car $800. So if you bought it with no trade I would sell it to you for $9,200. However you have a trade I value at $5000 dollars, I could then give you the $5000 it’s actually worth and the $800 discount and show you that I was giving you $5,800. This example would be an $800 over-allowance.

$10,000  Car                                           $10,000  Car

   ($800) Discount                                     $5,800 Over-allowance

 ($5000) Trade                                      ___________      

 $4,200 Difference                                $4,200 Difference

To confuse matters more there are variations on this theme; I can give you a $400 discount and a $400 Over-allowance and on and on. Although I know many dealers who never use this form of negotiation you kinda never know so you need to be aware of that, so you can simplify the process.

Many, so called experts would tell you to lie and tell the dealer you don’t have a trade and slip it in after they have given you there ‘so called’ “best price”. Horrible practice, number one, your lying, Dah! Number two, once you slip the trade-in on the dealer you have just told him you don’t trust him and you either get a ‘game-on’ reaction you many never know existed or at minimum eroded any trust or witness you may have had with the salesman.

My advice is; do your home work. Don’t just look at the Kelly Blue book and such. Ninety nine out of one hundred customers have no idea how to rate their car; clean, average, rough etc…Then you also have to have experience in market conditions and color, interior and option factors all have a lot to do with the value. The good news is there are plenty of experts around who will gladly give you a wholesale figure on you car’s value, just go to a few of the bigger nicer used car lots in town and ask them how much they would pay you cash for your car. With those numbers in hand along with the book values, you are now ready to sit down with any car salesman and discuss real trade in value and real discount.

In Flanders Fields
          John McCrae, 1915.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.                                                              

                 Moina Michael

                        1915

   We cherish too, the Poppy red
   That grows on fields where valor led,
   It seems to signal to the skies
  That blood of heroes never dies.

Military BibleSticks To Bless Our Troops