Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 144 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope your English learning is going great and that you're ready for another episode to practice your listening skills and And in today's episode we're going to talk about buying a car, specifically buying a car in the US, and what some different options are here and some different things that that you need to consider before buying a car.
And the reason why I chose this topic for today is because I'm most likely gonna be buying a car soon.
That's my plan and I hope that in the near future this actually happens.
And so this topic is on my mind, And I've had to think about some of these different things that I'm going to mention here in this episode.
I'm not really going to talk about my specific car buying experience.
I'll talk in general about this process and I'm sure you'll learn some new vocabulary words in this episode.
So, it'll be good for your listening and also to learn some new words.
So that's what we'll talk about today.
And remember that if you want my help, my training to help you understand English speakers when they speak fast, then make sure to sign up for my membership to get my listening practice seminars.
And if you become a family member, then you'll also get my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast.
And, of course, you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast if you want my podcast, in which I talk to other English speakers about different topics and I provide the transcript and the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
The link to both of those are down below in the episode description.
So go down and check that out if you're interested.
And you have the transcript for this episode down below for free as well.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about buying a car.
First, I'll just mention really briefly my current situation and then I'll talk in general.
I want a bigger vehicle, one that has three rows.
A row refers to a line of something, in this case a line of seats, right?
So some cars have two rows, some cars have three rows, and some cars only have one row.
I'm looking for a three-row SUV, so kind of a bigger car.
And the one that I'm considering actually seats eight people.
This means that eight people can fit in this car.
So that's a lot of seats and I like that.
So I'm looking at this car and we'll see what happens.
There are some different options that I need to consider, and I haven't decided yet on how exactly I'm gonna go about buying this car and where I'm gonna buy it from, but I'm looking right now.
But let's pretend that you're in my position and you're in the US.
You want to buy a car.
What are your options and what does this process look like?
Well, there are a number of things you could possibly do.
You could buy an older car in cash maybe because it's cheaper.
When we say that you buy something in cash, this means that you're paying the whole price.
You're not financing it.
When you finance something, this means that you don't pay the whole price now.
You pay a down payment, which is the initial amount that you pay, and then the rest of the money gets paid off over a certain number of months, right?
That's financing.
So you could buy an older car in cash because it's cheaper.
Or maybe you want a car that's used but that isn't that old and it's still kind of expensive, so you can finance that used car.
You could finance a new car.
Maybe you want a new vehicle and you probably don't have the money to pay for it in cash, but you can finance it.
Or you could possibly lease a car.
I'll talk about that option in just a little bit.
You probably aren't super familiar with that term, but just wait and I'll explain it.
So first let's talk about buying a car in cash, and you could buy this car from a couple different sources.
You could buy a used car in cash from a private seller, just a random person who's selling their car.
In the US, you might see offers like this on the website Craigslist.
This is a very popular website for selling used cars and a lot of things.
And maybe on Facebook Marketplace, I've seen a lot of used cars for sale there.
And When you buy a used car from a private seller, of course you might find cheaper options, you might find better deals.
However, it's also riskier in most cases because you don't know this person, you don't know if they're being honest with you and you might not have the ability to do a full inspection of the car before you buy it.
Hopefully you can bring a mechanic or something to go check it out.
But I've done this before.
I bought an old used car in Mexico from a private seller and I brought a mechanic with me and it still went badly.
I didn't get a full report from the mechanic about all the problems and then when we bought it we realized it had a ton of problems.
So even if you take a mechanic with you to go check it out, you still run the risk of buying a car that has problems that you don't know about right.
And, of course, when you buy from a private seller, you don't have as many options for different things.
You're not gonna get a warranty.
A warranty refers to guarantee that the seller gives you that says that if there's a problem with the item that they're selling you within a certain time period, you can get your money back or return it or whatever.
So you're not gonna get a warranty on from some random guy who's selling you a car.
So those are some things you need to consider.
You can also buy a used car from a dealership maybe a used car dealership, a place where they just sell used cars, or maybe the actual company dealership, the company of the car And that dealership might sell new and used vehicles there.
So you don't have to buy a used car from a private seller.
You can go to a dealership, and there are some things to consider if you buy from a dealership.
First of all, you'll have to deal with a salesperson, and that's not fun when it comes to buying a used car.
These sales people aren't known for having the most um, let's say, integrity or honesty when dealing with potential customers.
Some of them are honest and some of them aren't, and you don't know who you're gonna get when you go.
But I think most of us would agree that it's usually not really fun to deal with a car salesperson.
But that's what you'll have to do if you buy from a dealership.
However, you're probably going to have less risk.
It's probably going to be a safer option because it's not just some random guy who's selling you a car.
It's a dealership that has a reputation and a whole company and they might give you a warranty, or the car might still have its original warranty as well, but they might give you a warranty and you can probably see the full history of the car and everything that has happened to it.
It's probably a safer option.
You might pay more than if you were to buy from a private seller.
And There are two ways you could buy from a dealership You can pay in cash, pay the full amount, or you can finance the car.
And You can finance a car in two ways really.
You can get a, the financing, directly from the dealer, from the dealership.
They will lend you the money and you have to pay them back.
Or you can go through a bank and get an auto loan from a bank and then use that to finance the car.
An auto loan refers to money that is lent to someone It's money that someone borrows to buy a car.
That's an auto loan.
So you can get an auto loan through a bank as well.
And there are pros and cons to both options.
You have to decide what's right for you.
And you could also finance a new car, right?
Maybe if you already need to finance the car...
You think that it's worth it to just do a new car, get a new car instead of a used car and pay a little more?
And of course, there are some advantages here because the car has no history.
It hasn't been driven before.
It hasn't had accidents and all these different problems before.
You're the first one to own it.
So that's awesome.
And you're probably going to get a warranty or hopefully you'll get a warranty if you're buying it through the dealer and it's new.
And so if something happens within a certain time or a certain number of miles that you drive, then you know that you can go to that dealer and say hey, there's a problem with my car, you know what are you gonna do about this and you have that safety, so to say.
And if you finance a new car, the interest rate is usually lower, so you don't have to pay as much in terms of the interest rate and sometimes you can get a really good deal, like my brother-in-law recently bought a car And he got a really low interest rate because they were having a special deal at the end of the year.
And so he was able to get a new car at a very low interest rate because of that.
So you can find those deals sometimes.
But of course you still have to deal with a salesperson and they're probably going to try to get you to add on extra things to the car so that you pay more, and they're going to be kind of pushy.
When someone is pushy, they're really insisting on something.
They're really trying to push you to do something.
So that's not pleasant and you'll have to deal with that many times and the car will be more expensive, of course.
So there are some downsides to financing a new car And you can also lease a car.
I mentioned this earlier.
When you lease a vehicle, this means that you get to drive a new car, usually for three years.
I think that's the normal length.
And then after those three years, you either return it to the dealership Or you can buy it if you want to keep that car.
And this is an interesting option because you can drive a new car without needing to buy it.
So you just pay this certain amount every month for those few years that you have it.
And then afterwards you can decide whether you want to buy it or not.
And if you don't want to buy it, then you can return it and lease a new vehicle and then update it and get a vehicle that's even newer.
And some people just keep doing this.
They never actually buy the vehicle.
They just keep leasing new vehicles and they always drive new cars.
So that's pretty cool.
But of course, the downside is that it's not your car unless you decide to buy it afterwards.
So yeah, you have it for a few years, but it's not actually yours.
You don't actually own it.
So you have to consider whether that's the right option or not.
Do you want to own your car, or do you want to kind of rent a new car, so to say, to lease it and just be able to drive this new car for a few years?
So that's another option that some people might choose.
So those are some different ways you can buy a car, either used or new, from a private seller.
A dealership, lease it.
Those are some different options.
And besides just the method or the way that you're going to pay for your car, of course, there are tons of other things that you need to consider right.
There are some really important things that you need to look at to make a good decision about which vehicle to buy, and especially if it's a used car.
So one of the first things that comes to mind is the mileage.
This refers to how many miles it's been driven.
In other countries, it will be kilometers, of course.
But in the US, this is called the mileage.
And if you buy a used car that has a lot of miles on it, that might be risky, because that car has been driven for a long time and it's probably gonna need more maintenance than a car that only has a few miles on it.
So that's one of the criteria that I'm really paying attention to, because I'm looking to buy a used car, not a new one.
And another thing that you want to consider is the history of the vehicle.
So has it had accidents before?
And if it has had many accidents, you might think twice about buying it, because You don't know if those accidents caused certain damage that can maybe come back to haunt you in the future.
When we say that something comes back to haunt you, we're saying that it has negative effects for you in the future.
Maybe not right now, but in the future. the negative effects will appear.
So that's one thing.
And maybe it has a salvage title.
In the US, the phrase salvage title refers to the fact that this vehicle suffered significant damage, like it was in a huge accident, and then the insurance company deemed it too expensive to fix.
When we deem something to be something else, we are judging it to be that thing.
So the insurance company judged this car as being too damaged, too messed up to fix.
So the insurance company deemed that the car was too expensive to fix.
So they didn't even bother doing that.
And maybe the owner of the car still wanted to fix it.
So they fixed it themselves or some other way.
And now they're selling it again.
But this car has a salvage title, meaning that at some point it had really significant damage and it was fixed.
After that maybe, but you need to be aware of that because it might not be as safe as it should be now because of that damage.
So that's definitely something that you want to consider, right, if the car has a salvage title.
And you also want to consider if the car was used just for personal use, just a normal person driving it, or was it used by a company before?
Or was it a rental car before?
You'll see a lot of rental cars that used to be rental cars, and now they're for sale.
And A lot of people don't like buying rental cars because they think that they weren't treated very well, because a bunch of random people drove that car and who knows what they did to it.
So that's another thing to consider.
And then the year of the car itself.
If it's an older car in terms of the year, that's going to have some effects, right?
Older cars tend to need more maintenance than newer cars and they were built differently.
They have different features.
So of course, you'll want to consider that as well.
And then there are some Other preferences you might have for your car Aesthetic preferences like how they look, for example, or just How they feel the space.
You'll want to consider the different trim levels of the car.
This means that the same model one model of a car can have different levels with different features.
So if you buy the base trim level of a car, it's just gonna have the basic features that that car has.
But if you buy a higher trim level, Then you get other features.
Maybe you get a wireless phone charger, or you get a built-in navigation system, or whatever it might be.
But different trim levels have different features.
So you have to look at that as well.
The color, that's a big one for people.
They only want certain colors or they might not like certain colors.
And then maybe you need your car to have towing capacity.
When your car tows something else, this means that it pulls that thing behind it.
So if you use a truck to tow a boat, that means that you have this boat with wheels behind the truck and your truck is pulling the boat behind it.
It's towed. towing this boat.
So maybe you want a car with towing capacity, maybe you want a certain type of engine transmission a bunch of different things, of course.
So these are all things you need to take into consideration before you buy something.
So I think that's all I wanted to talk about today.
Hopefully you learned some new words and hopefully you learned a little bit about some of the different options that we have in the US in terms of buying a vehicle.
And I hope this episode was good practice for your listening.
Remember to sign up for my membership if you want my specialized training to help you understand native speakers when they speak fast.
The link is down below in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you want my US Conversations podcast, the link is also down below.
And You'll really like that podcast, if you want to learn a lot about the US, the different states here, and if you want to practice with two people talking instead of just one.
So that link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash usconversations.
And you have the transcript for this episode down there as well.
And as always, please share this podcast and give it a five-star rating and write a review.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
