CONSUMER AFFAIRS: Calculate vehicle cost with Web sites

BY Joseph PELLICCIOTTI

The Federal Soldier Citizen Information Center offers an online consumer focus, "Car Ownership: Way to Salvage Cash, and Keep Your Car on the Road" (www.pueblo.gsa.gov).The focusing includes a listing of Internet land sites that supply vehicle cost calculating machines to consumers interested in buying vehicles.One site, www.autofinancing101.org/learningsuite/index.asp, maintained by Americans Well-informed on Car Retailing Economics (AWARE), includes an auto funding monthly payment calculating machine for estimating potentiality payments.The land land land site includes a monthly budget/affordability gage and a day-to-day budget/affordability gauge, for estimating whether or not you can afford the car or motortruck you're contemplating.An auto loan calculating machine is also available at the AWARE site. This calculating machine lets consumers to change loan terms, trade-in values and down payments to gauge monthly payments and the sum cost of your vehicle and funding over time.Other FCIC-listed land sites include:-- IntelliChoice (www.intellichoice.com), A land land site that lets consumers to rank vehicles by last repair, care and combustible costs.-- The Kelley Blue Book site (www.kbb.com/kbb/CompareCars/Default.aspx), where consumers can compare auto pricing information for new and used vehicles.When considering vehicle cost, the FCIC proposes that consumers utilize the 2/10/60 rule, a regulation that presumes you'll maintain your vehicle five years.To use the rule, you choose your top five vehicle choices, and, for each, you double its retail cost, multiply by 10 percent, and watershed that figure by 60 to acquire an estimation of the monthly cost of vehicle ownership during the adjacent five years.Opinions expressed solely are those of the writer. Chief Joseph Pellicciotti is a lawyer, professor and associate frailty premier at Hoosier State University Northwest.