As if we haven’t had enough stuff going on, we are in the process of buying an almost new car. My mother bought a brand new Honda Accord last year because she wanted something more fuel-efficient (she previously had a Mercury Mountaineer), however after driving SUVs for several years she just couldn’t get used to a sedan and decided to go back to a Mountaineer. Since both my wife and I are big fans of Hondas, we have always told her we would be interested in buying her Accord if she decided to sell. So we are buying her Accord while she buys a new Mountaineer.

This is going to be one big family car swap, as we will take her Accord, a brother-in-law and his wife are taking our 2001 Honda Civic, and they are selling her 2004 Kia Rio (yeah, I know, which of these things doesn’t belong?).

This shows the blessing of having your financial house in order and having cash on hand. We don’t have to worry with applying for loans to do this deal. Our only delay is transferring funds in from our online account at FNBO and overnighting paperwork between Houston and Baton Rouge. You never know what opportunities you may miss out on my not having the flexibility of cash on hand.

Trent over at The Simple Dollar had a post recently about the economics of speeding, in which he details how a recent speeding ticket messed up his day and makes the argument that speeding doesn’t save enough time to justify the costs when you do get caught. Interesting post, but here is my take on it…

Trent’s entire posting is based in logic, which is fine and all, but this is America. Deep down almost all of us are hard-wired at birth with the attitude of “I wanna go fast!”, with the except of most of the population of Texas, who can’t do anything fast. That’s just who we are. In most places if you were only going 6 over the limit as Trent was, you would receive approximately 2.1 raised middle fingers per mile driven.

It is true that speeding may not make much of a difference on a short trip, but for people with extended commutes or on long road trips it makes little since not to speed. If you have a 25 mile commute, you save 7 minutes each way going 75mph instead of 55mph. For a 300 mile road trip, it is almost an hour and a half saved (4 hrs vs. 5 hrs 27 mins).

Drivers should use good judgment, but if you are the only car around I think you are justified in exceeding the limit, especially by only 6 miles per hour! Giving tickets for such an infraction shows that the police are not concerned with safety but are being pushed to write tickets to raise revenue because our elected officials don’t have the testicular fortitude to either raise taxes or cut spending.

BTW, be sure to check out his blog. There is some great content over there, and right now he is doing a giveaway contest for intelligent responses to recent postings on his site. He has five different books he is giving away, so take a look and make your voice heard.