A piece on TheStreet.com confirms my suspicion that people are really not very intelligent at all. Car loans are getting longer and, according to Jesse Toprak of Edmunds.com, "Most consumers still come into dealerships and tell the salespeople that they want to pay a certain amount of money per month for their car. That is probably the single worst way to shop."

In the past five years, the length of the average car loan has increased by four months to 63.8 months. There are a number of reasons these long loans are really bad for the consumer:

• A long loan generally means you pay more in interest. To pay the least interest, go for the shortest loan possible: Pay cash!
• At some point, there is a good chance you will owe more on the car than it is worth, making it difficult to trade up if you want a new car.

As Toprak said, you should never ever, ever, ever, go into buy a car thinking in terms of "the monthly payment." That's how they want you to think, and it's a really good way to hoodwink yourself into buying more car than you can really afford. Call me a prude, but I'm of the school of thought that, when it comes to cars, "If you can't pay cash, that means you can't afford it."

To learn the tricks to buying a car the smart way, check out Read this Before You Buy a Car.

Car buyers get dumber, and dumber, and dumber originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There are good reasons to hand your money over to a bank, financial planner, or mutual fund, and there are bad reasons. Low costs and a strong record of sound management would be good reasons. A recent hot-streak or sexy advertising may be bad reasons. But then there are really bad reasons, and I would put a company's aptitude at genealogical research into that category.

According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is trying to seal the deal with wealthy prospects by offering the services of genealogist Andy Anderson, the bank's corporate historian. According to the article, "In recent years, the former Stanford University history fellow has turned genealogical research into an unusual marketing vehicle: After Dr. Anderson taps into rich families' fascination with their forebears, the bank aims to turn them into customers for its private-banking arm. By Wells Fargo's estimate, Dr. Anderson has had a hand in developing relationships that have led to $1 billion in new assets for the bank."

I don't even really know what to say. But next time a bank offers you nice perks, ask yourself this: How much money is the bank going to be making from my account if it can afford to deploy a Stanford history fellow to research my ancestors?

Any bank that can provide that service probably is not the lowest-cost option, which is really important when it comes to money management.

Genealogical research as an investment perk? Seriously? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 20 May 2007 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.