You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
We got a special treat for you today.
It's an encore episode from 2020 by the fantastic Chris Arnold, and it's about how to buy a car.
Chris is a correspondent at NPR, and he is hands down one of my favorite people to listen to.
He has this way of making finance super clear and understandable, but also just funny and engaging.
So here it is.
I think you're going to learn a lot.
Car buying can be tricky.
Those folks at the dealership, they know everything about how to play this game and you don't.
When I was being trained to be a car salesman, the teacher drew what looked like a speedometer on the whiteboard, and he said, you need to get your customer up on the excitement meter.
That's Philip Reid, decades helping people make smarter car buying decisions.
And that excitement meter he's talking about, you want to keep an eye on that, too.
So they ask, what is this car worth?
You say, well, you know, we can sell it to you for 19,000.
But look at the car.
Can you imagine having this in your driveway?
Can you imagine your friend saying, whoa, you got a new car?
So that's the excitement meter.
And they're always trying to get you as high on that as possible.