Dumb-Dumbs

I heard this story on NPR yesterday about how high gas prices are forcing people to trade in their SUV's at dirt cheap prices. One guy bought his SUV not too long ago for $30,000. The used car dealership is offering him $11,000 for it. Then there's the guy who bought a Cadillac Escalade last year for $70,000. The dealership is offering him $31,000 for it now.

My first instinct was to laugh. Stupid people paying the consequences for stupid choices -- what better form of justice is there? Who buys a $70,000 car that gets 13 miles to the gallon anyway?

But then Brian made me feel guilty by saying it wasn't right to act superior. There was also another news story on immediately after saying we humans aren't designed to make good financial decisions anyway. I don't know. Sounds like a whole lot of rationalization to me.

Why can't I gloat about my old, paid off, economical Honda? They've been gloating about their ridiculously huge, over-priced, gas-guzzling, 2-parking-space-hogging, blind-spot-ridden, top-heavy SUV's for years. Not that I'm bitter. Whatever. I'm okay paying an extra $20 a month on gas so that I don't have to deal with as many of these monster trucks on the road.

One good point of the article was that these people might be taking a $40,000 hit, when, if they sat down and calculated it, the gas hit might only be like $1,000 a year. There they go again, making dumb-dumb decisions.