Yesterday I went to the bank to withdraw funds from savings for the purchase of a hybrid vehicle (my current commute is 82 miles round trip with significant carpool lane opportunities for a vehicle with the permits that allow access.) The seller of the vehicle is not willing to accept anything but cash, no problem for me, I’ve got cash I can use but it’s in the bank.
I’ve banked with Wells Fargo since 1989 and they’re enormous with branches all over the place. The closest branch is in a grocery store, I didn’t go there because I thought a bank with an actual vault (where they keep cash) would be a better bet. When I asked the teller to withdraw the money, she signaled the service manager to come over due to the amount, less than $20,000 more than $10,000.
The service manager indicated they didn’t have that kind of cash hanging around the bank! I was shocked. I mean, this is a bank isn’t it? This was the downtown San Mateo branch, one of the larger ones on the peninsula…I could withdraw cash, but only a portion of the required amount. I had to go to two other bank branches to repeat the process to gather the required amount. If I could wait until Friday, they could special order the amount. Amazing.
Now, I don’t know the liquidity requirements on banks, but I’d think they need to be a little bit north of $20k for a large metropolitan area bank. Are we experiencing a liquidity crisis? I have to admit, it didn’t make me feel very confident to find that I was unable to access my own money! Has anyone else run into this situation?
[…] When I purchased my Honda Hybrid back in July, gas prices in California were hovering right around $5/gallon. As I write this, they’re now a little over $3/gallon. What a change. And, don’t get used to it, they’ll be going back up as the era of cheap gas is long gone. As the economy recovers so too will the price of gas. But that’s a subject for another blog entry… When I was making the decision to buy this car, I had visions of grandeur where I would buy a Prius, convert it to a plug-in electric hybrid vehicle, have access to the carpool lanes, and pay not very much for fuel while doing it. Fortunately, my pragmatic side kicked in and forced me to examine the realities of my situation: I have no time for projects. I needed access to the carpool lane, nothing more, nothing less. The price of fuel has almost zero bearing on my life, so why be obsessed with the gas mileage? Ultimately, I concluded that I needed car pool lane access stickers attached to the cheapest reasonably safe vehicle I could find and that all pointed toward the Honda Civic. (And, I do have to admit I still think the Prius is dorky looking. The Civic will win no design awards, but at least it just looks like a regular sedan.) That pragmatism saved me about $15,000 of the overall acquisition/improvement price tag (difference in price between Honda and Toyota + PHEV conversion kit.) Now, having driven nearly 6,000 miles, I appreciate my pragmatic side all the more. By the numbers, here’s what this car has done for me: […]
[…] It has been a year since I purchased a Honda Hybrid back in July, 2008 and this entry is the annual report of that experience. In a year of commuting, the car has clocked around 440 miles (~700 km) per week during the commute. The conditions have changed steadily over the course of the year with gasoline prices moving in a range of $2.80-$5.08/gallon (weighted average of $3.25/gallon) and gas mileage hitting a range of 43-49 mpg depending upon driving conditions and approach. Again, a weighted average is 44.7 mpg for the entire time period. As a reminder, the hybrid replaced an 18 mpg vehicle with this one, not so much for fuel, but for access to the carpool lane which saves around 15 minutes per day, or a hour and a quarter per week. Given the parameters above and the total mileage of 19,382 elapsed during the period, the gas savings has been about $2100. This is like being paid nearly $90/month to drive the car in cold, hard cash. The time savings is even more dramatic, over the year I calculate it to be about $8000, or being paid $650/month for driving this car. Finally, around 12,000 lbs of CO2 wasn’t emitted for this vehicle vs. the alternative, or around 630 tree-years worth of greenhouse gas reduction. Even with all this goodness, I have to admit, I still like my other vehicles better. But the benefits of this vehicle are hard to ignore – driving another year effectively means the car was “free” relative to the benefits accrued vs. the purchase price. That it still has residual value is a bonus! But, the fit and finish are not great. The geometry of the vehicle is odd, and I’m relatively speaking, a small human. It feels like a tin can to drive. The acceleration is miserable and the creature comforts are lacking. Oh well, you have to give something to get something and that’s the price of the benefits. Despite the drawbacks, I’ll drive the car for another year and reassess the situation then. For now, it does the trick. Share This Article! […]