kubota or mahindra

[fried1765]

nope. it's the same price except for the $300-$400.fee they charge. Then, they also require the insurance. so, if you deduct the 300-400 fee and the insurance. you save paying cash on a kubota

I found the whole process a lot more cost effective, by buying a 250.9 hour used Kubota (L48 TLB) from a private party.
Two things were required: 8 months of patience to find it, and 32K cash.

 

[arrow]

OK. t.

The funny thing is that I don't do that kind of investing thing before. And I never would have done it if I hadn't been so disappointed that the dealer wouldn't give me a discount for cash. What I really wanted was a few thousand off the purchase price, or for him to throw in some "goodies". But he wouldn't.
rScotty

Good for you. Smart with your residual. A dealership is bound by the manufacturers to get full price while offering 0%. They sometimes can offer only a slight discount but cannot go beyond a calculated amount where it cuts into the manufacturers investment return percentage cut-off. Some remain very adamant and refuse to budge. It really limits a buyer's options as to what's best for the buyer.

 

[arrow]

That wasn't my experience at all but I didn't buy Kubota. 3 dealers, 3 different prices for Kubota and they were a good $4K apart. Leads me to believe that there is a lot more room in their prices than some dealers let on.

Most tractor dealerships are working on a 25% mark-up.

 

[nova3930]

The next week I went over to the downtown outlet for a well known on-line broker and with the cash I had offered the dealer I opened up an account for the price of the tractor. That acccount came with a free checking account and checks. I kept back 20% of the cash, and invested the rest on the spot into buying stock shares in four very conservative mutual funds that were expected to grow in value while paying dividends: One financial, one manufacturing, one hi-tech, and one bonds. The rest of the cash I held back to make the first year payments.

My plan was that once a year - usually in December - I would sell just enough stocks back to the broker to make the next years payments. I was pretty nervous about all this, but hey ... at this point I have a tractor and still have control of my original money.
All the dealer has to show for his once new tractor is a piece of paper with a promise to pay if I can. The only collateral he really has is a tractor which lives on my land which I get to use every day. The dealer is left with a piece of paper plus watching the collateral for his loan get older and weatherbeaten as I use it. So it looks to me like I'm doing OK.

Then it all screwed up. All this happened in 2007 .....just a couple of months BEFORE the stock market dropped in that huge 2007/2008 dip. My cleverly thought out tractor account suddenly lost 30% of it's value overnight. I thought I had made a big mistake and was going to end up paying 30% more for the tractor than if I had paid cash..., but decided to say with the plan....mostly because I was so shocked that I didn't know what else to do.

Well, you know the rest. All my life when I do these kind of things it ends up costing me money. But that time the market came roaring back like it never had before. The cash I first held back made the payments the first year when the stock was worthless... so nothing got sold at a loss. Then when it came time to sell for the next year the price was already looking good.
In the end, the account ended up paying for the tractor plus a little. I kept the account. After 8 years it had grown to be worth almost as much as the tractor cost.

You came out on the plus side of opportunity cost. That's the economic advantage of borrowing $. You still retain use of your money on an ongoing basis to do other things. Not to mention that with 0%, you essentially end up paying back a large portion of the loan with dollars that are worth less every day that goes by.

My wife has a nice mortgage in loans from med school that we keep sitting on, primarily because we want to do other things with the $ and when we refinanced, the interest rate was like 1.5%. Inflation is 3% or better so no reason to pay it off with more valuable dollars now.

 

[arrow]

0% means knock 7-8% off that price and get your own financing.

He)), you can negotiate deeper than 7 or 8%. The trouble is what rScotty ran into. If a particular tractor has the 0% attached to it and no other buying option given, the consumer is forced into this surreptitious realm if they want that particular tractor. Going to a different dealership of the same brand is of little use if they are abiding by the same manufacturer's edict.
It's as if they are offering you an apple but it's really poisonous.

 

[nards444]

That wasn't my experience at all but I didn't buy Kubota. 3 dealers, 3 different prices for Kubota and they were a good $4K apart. Leads me to believe that there is a lot more room in their prices than some dealers let on.

There is. But what people are saying is 0% or cash doesnt matter sometimes for certain brands. I bought my Kubota this spring, told him I was buying cash, he said why explained I had it. He said go 0% keep your cash. There was no difference in price other than being forced into insurance, which a brand new 30k machine insurance is a must anyways. Glad I listened because I needed that cash to build my house.

People still have a hard time understanding cash doesnt mean anything anymore. Just doesnt.

 

[desertdog71]

There is. But what people are saying is 0% or cash doesnt matter sometimes for certain brands. I bought my Kubota this spring, told him I was buying cash, he said why explained I had it. He said go 0% keep your cash. There was no difference in price other than being forced into insurance, which a brand new 30k machine insurance is a must anyways. Glad I listened because I needed that cash to build my house.

People still have a hard time understanding cash doesnt mean anything anymore. Just doesnt.

I walk away from dealers that don't want to deal. I don't fall in love with stuff, so if the dealer doesn't want to deal the one down the road might. Cash still has some weight to it. We keep going back to this one scenario where his dealer didn't want to budge on price. Fact is some dealers make money on how much they get per unit, others make money on volume. It doesn't take too much research online to figure out what you can really buy something for. The Kubota dealer in my town also has a GM dealership and he is always priced too high and his cars sit around forever, same with his tractors. I can drive 100 miles any direction and buy for much less. So why would I spend more with them? Convenience? Good dealer relations? Eff them. I'm not going to bend over in hopes they won't do it to me again later. I bought my F-150 in a nearby town instead of here for the same reason. They wanted to deal on the truck I wanted. The whole buy local BS is fine with me, but you better bring something to the table if you expect me to pay more.

I don't know jack about tractors, but I'm the one with the cash so whether you want to believe it holds weight or not is up to you. If you want my cash you have to work a little harder to get it.

 

[nards444]

I walk away from dealers that don't want to deal. I don't fall in love with stuff, so if the dealer doesn't want to deal the one down the road might. Cash still has some weight to it. We keep going back to this one scenario where his dealer didn't want to budge on price. Fact is some dealers make money on how much they get per unit, others make money on volume. It doesn't take too much research online to figure out what you can really buy something for. The Kubota dealer in my town also has a GM dealership and he is always priced too high and his cars sit around forever, same with his tractors. I can drive 100 miles any direction and buy for much less. So why would I spend more with them? Convenience? Good dealer relations? Eff them. I'm not going to bend over in hopes they won't do it to me again later. I bought my F-150 in a nearby town instead of here for the same reason. They wanted to deal on the truck I wanted. The whole buy local BS is fine with me, but you better bring something to the table if you expect me to pay more.

I don't know jack about tractors, but I'm the one with the cash so whether you want to believe it holds weight or not is up to you. If you want my cash you have to work a little harder to get it.

I agree, now in some cases financing changes things I agree but always. But the mere fact of not dickering really has nothing to do with how its paid for. In most cases with dealers if they wont dicker they wont do so dont matter how you pay, and yeah thats up to you if you want to play or not.

 

[dan4jeepin]

I personally hate haggling for things. Just tell me what you want for it and I'll make a decision on if I want it or not. I don't want to play games waiting to see if a dealer will call me back and offer it for less or always wonder if I overpaid because I didn't play the game. It also makes comparison shopping a pain because you don't truly know what brand X is selling for compared to Brand Y. I don't haggle when I buy a TV, groceries, gas and would love to buy car, tractor the same way.

 

[desertdog71]

I love haggling, have haggled on TV's before. Everything is negotiable as far as I'm concerned.