Below is a shot of the car we lease for Ransom; it's the smallest Lexus Hybrid SUV and a nice car. We paid $155 in July to register it in CT for three years — I knew we'd be changing the registration to California soon after but I didn't want to be driving a car cross-country with an expired registration.
So now I've gotten it registered in California, for a price of -- are you sitting down — $587.20 FOR ONE YEAR. In other words, more than ten times the annual fee in Connecticut. Ten times! And I'm not adding in the $60 I had to pay for the smog inspection.
So, yeah, things aren't cheap out here. AAA says the cheapest gas close to me is $4.16 a gallon. In the interest of full disclosure I will point out that in CT we paid personal property taxes every year on whatever cars we leased and that California has no such tax. But, trust me, they get my money in lots of other ways.
I received an offer yesterday to subscribe to the paper edition of the New York Times. $1 a week for the introductory period and then $10 a week after that. That's $520 per year. And guess what. That's for the Sunday paper only! Thank you, no, I'll stick with the digital edition.
All of this is old news, I know. We all complain about how expensive things are, but the car registration was a real shocker. Remember, I'm from the generation that first encountered McDonalds. And when I worked there as a 15 year-old, if you ordered two cheeseburgers, an order of fries and a large soda and gave me a dollar, I'D GIVE YOU 30 CENTS BACK!
(Of course I was working for $1 an hour).
Just another rant from your favorite cynic.
As soon as one of our ancient Subarus bites the dust, we plan to replace it with a hybrid or electric car. So we just spent $1,500 to install electrical stuff to charge a car from our garage. The geezer adventure continues.
ReplyDelete