There's No Sense in Nonsense

I know that I pretty much only write about KatersOneSeven and Cory/SMPFilms these days, but I guess I'm fairly disillusioned with the entire vlogging community these days, so I don't really watch many anymore to complain about!

There's a couple of things I wanted to discuss.  Primarily, Kate's new car.  Let's forget the fact that it's a Nissan Juke, one of the ugliest cars presently on the market, with awful gas mileage to boot.  Cory owned a Nissan, so I imagine he talked her into buying one as well out of brand loyalty rather than actually knowing anything about cars, as has been covered in this blog previously.

So it's been, what, less than six months since Kate got her Ford Focus?  I imagine that she got it for around five to eight thousand bucks, which isn't bad, especially given that the Focus isn't too bad of a car.  I had the same thing for a while myself, so I know what it's like.  But what doesn't make sense is why Kate would be jumping up and getting another car so soon, and a NEW car at that.  It wasn't a month ago that she bought a brand new computer to be able to make better videos, and then returned it because her finances weren't what she thought they were going to be.  Now she's gotten herself into about eight years of payments on a car that will be lucky to last that long.

The fact of the matter is, buying a new car is unquestionably a bad decision.  Unless you're very rich, there is no logical justification for doing so, other than "I want it."  The moment you sign those papers and drive it off the lot, it's lost 10% of its value.  It's no longer a new car.  You can put a hundred miles on it and then decide you don't like it, but suddenly it's worth quite a few dollars less because it's a previously owned vehicle.

Given that the Juke starts at $20k (and who knows how many options she added, not to mention at least $2k of tax and then a bunch of dealer fees), she already lost $2k driving it off the lot.  Might as well have burned that money.  Which is ironic, given that that much would have bought the computer she returned.

In five years, you're looking at a mere 40% of the original value.  That means she's lost $12k (not counting the tax and fees on top of the original vehicle price) before she's even paid it off. 

Meanwhile, she's going to sell her Focus to Cory, which I'm quite sure she won't sell him for market value given their relationship.  So he might give her $2-4k for it, depending on how generous she is, which is barely enough to pay for any serious down payment.  

So basically, the lack of sense put into in buying this vehicle is apparent.  And this isn't just about Kate; people make this same blunder all of the time.  They get into serious debt for a vehicle they don't need with money they don't have just so that they can feel good about owning something that's never been owned.  They don't consider that there could be a serious and/or annoying recall within the first few months, either, which is all the more reason to avoid a new vehicle.

Then to make matters worse, Kate was going on about credit in a way which seemed to indicate that she didn't entirely understand it, and worse yet, was practically promoting that people get into debt in order to build their credit score.  But whatever, people and their spending problems is a whole other topic.

My last complaint about the car she chose is that, as someone who pinches pennies as hard as she does, I fail to understand buying something with such bad gas mileage considering how much driving she has to do, and will inevitably do in the future for her career.  If I were going to blow $20k on a car, I'd at least want a little bit of return in how much fuel it guzzles.



Anyway, the other topic I wanted to mention in this post was about the UFO thing I just watched, where Kate and Cory are out in a parking lot at night and are certain they see one..  Instead of considering the options of what it could be, or asking someone what they think it might be, they just immediately jump to the most far-fetched conclusion: that it definitely has to be an alien.  And Cory matter-of-factly stating this just made me facepalm, since it's certainly not the first time he's factually declared something ridiculous and been utterly wrong.  I've got 99 explanations, but a UFO aint one.


So yeah, that's my facepalming session for the time being.  I don't try to be too harsh or anything, but come on.  If people put themselves out there for the public to view their lives, then it's fair game to criticize as well.  That's the whole point in this blog!  Besides, there's more than enough fanboys in the world to make up for anything I say.