LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

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In case you haven’t heard, Congress will soon implement a “Cash For Clunkers” program. If you trade in your old car, you’ll get $3,500 towards the lease or purchase of a new one. If you have an old SUV you’ll get $4,500. Seems like a good plan doesn’t it?

Yesterday I had a short phone call with Bob Meigan, VP of TurboTax and we discussed the short-comings of this program. First of all, your car has to be a clunker. That is it shouldn’t be worth more than $3,500 since you won’t get anything extra if it is worth more.  By law, the dealer will have to scrap the car so even if its worth $5,000 he’s not going to give you a dime more than the $3,500 he’s getting from the goverment.

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India’s Tata Motors just unveiled its 100,000 rupee car today. According to today’s exchange rate, that works out to $2,551 which makes it the world’s cheapest car. Its a small car, with a 624 cc engine and seats 4 adults comfortably. (If you’ve ever sat in a rickshaw, you’d have a slightly lower standard of comfort).

This is good news of hundreds of millions of Indians who currently drive scooters and motorbikes and can now afford a car. The Nano costs about twice as much as a mid-range bike does. So you can expect it to wildly popular, especially in India and South East Asia.

Even though its very fuel efficient, at 76 miles/gallon in the petrol version (diesel version is expected to give you 92 miles/gallon) compared to the 195 miles/gallon you’d get from a scooter (& more from some bikes), its a rather large step down. This means that India’s consumption of oil is set to increase.  Read more... (412 words, 9 images, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the rush to produce ethanol has resulted in sharply higher prices for corn. Corn is used to feed cattle and pigs and as a result of the price increase, farmers are feeding their pigs trail mix, candy and Top Ramen noodles!

Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. “It’s kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs,” says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns.  Read more... (509 words, 8 images, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

The BMW just unvieled it’s new concept car, and its rumored to be the new 8-series. Very nice!

The CS feels like an evolution of that philosophy with sharper edges and swoopier surfaces all around. Underhood we’ll find a 6.0-liter V12, which is essentially the M5 5.0-liter V10 with two extra cylinders. That’s a nice modular motor for BMW if that ends up being the case, with 10-cylinder, 12-cylinder, and V8 versions used across the Motorsport models

Ok, who wants to buy me a new BMW?

Ferrari just came out with its new 620 hp 599 GTB. It kind of looks like the Jaguar XKR pictured  below!

Only its probably around $195,000 more expensive and has 50% more horsepower.

While blogging about saving money, making money and living frugally is all very fine, the whole idea is to get so damn rich you can buy any old crap you want. The object of my desire is the Ferrari Enzo. Only 350 were made and it costs around $700,000. While pretty ugly from certain angles, it looks like a space ship and packs a whopping 660 horses. Ferraris are expensive to maintain and require a transmission overhaul every 40,000 miles. So you have to be really really loaded in order to afford one. [Notice I said afford and not buy].

Something a little more affordable and probably just as much fun to drive is the new BMW M5. It packs 400 horses but at the touch of a button magically changes to 500! It won the highly covetted Internation Engine of the Year Award and costs a more affordable $85,000. Of course I won’t be buying one of these pretty soon [although my CPA might]. This should be more fun to drive than the Transporter’s 7 Series!  Read more... (289 words, 9 images, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)