Donate Car to Charity California, Donate Car for Tax Credit, Donate Cars in MA, Donate Your Car Sacramento, How to Donate A Car in California, Donate Your Car for Kids, Donate a Car in Maryland, Donating a Car in Maryland, Donate Cars Illinois, Donate Old Cars to Charity, Met Auto, Car Donate Gas station convenience stores a model of resilient capitalism Gas station convenience stores represent a microcosm of how capitalists are adapting to changing market conditions and surviving. When times are difficult, I believe that’s when the greatest creativity and ingenuity occurs. Recently, I was reading a story about the convenience store industry. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall the source.) The crux of the story was this: As we drive cars with better and better fuel efficiency, what do you do if you’re running a gas station convenience store? How do you attract people in as they need to fill up less and less? The beauty of capitalism is that it’s self-renewing and creative. I think about the culling of the herd in gas stations. When you drive around, you see boarded up stations all over the place. But other stations figure out how to survive. Today, as I drove around Greenboro, N.C., I passed two Sheetz locations. That’s when I remembered the founder was interviewed for the article I was reading. He was quotes as saying that he can’t just be gas station and expect to survive; he has to give another reason for you to come there. So at the two Sheetz locations I passed, I noticed what was like a picnic area with fancy tables and umbrellas where you can take the fresh food you just purchased. Those Sheetz locations might have gone extinct if they stayed as they were five years ago, being just a gas station convenience store. This message has relevance on the individual level too. Never go through life with blinders on. Look for the wider changes and figure out how to adapt to survive those. Be ready to reinvent yourself for success. If you stay doing what you’re doing, well, who knows what will happen. Editor’s note: Today’s broadcast originated from Greensboro, N.C., as Clark was on book tour for his New York Times No. 1 bestselling book, Clark Howard’s Living Large in Lean Times. Special thanks to FM Talk 101.1 WZTK for hosting Clark during the event. Car loan delinquencies at lowest level since 1999 CLARKONOMICS: New data about late payments on car loans suggests some positive movement in the economy. TransUnion reports 60-day late pays are at the lowest level they’ve been since tracking began in 1999. The delinquency rate is less than one-half of 1 percent. That means less than 1 out of every 200 people with car notes are delinquent on them. That’s fantastic news. The whole reason we’re in so much trouble right now is because of excess borrowing, excess speculation and excess promising. It was way too easy to borrow money for way too long. It got to the point that the average American took on debt of about $1.36 for every dollar earned at the peak of the trouble, which was about twice as much as the historical average. Today we are at a collective debt level of $1.14 for every dollar earned. So we’re going in the right direction, but there’s still more to be done. I just find it very heartening that people are still getting better and better at handling their obligations, even in the midst of a sluggish job outlook and a recovery that doesn’t feel like a recovery. The car loan delinquency numbers from TransUnion echo a decrease in delinquencies on home loans and credit cards, as well. Taken collectively, all are strong leading indicators of when the economy can truly recover. The things that got us into trouble were people essentially exhausting themselves financially with obligations. Take the housing market: Real estate was highly speculative and that exhausted us. We built far too many housing units. Up to 10 million sat vacant before the market fell apart. Now you see headline after headline talking about housing as still being in the toilet. But that is not true in more and more places. There’s been no new building to speak of and natural population growth has started to soak up the existing excess. On the issue of the government, people talk about bloated federal hiring. But really, state and local government employment was too large a percent of overall hiring activity in the United States. Yes, it’s rough if you’re the one facing the layoff now. Yet the reduction of headcount at state and local levels is a necessary part of the process of rebalancing the economy. Mark this well, though: The hardest work is yet to be done. We’ve got to deal with the obligations of the federal government on the promises of Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security to a lesser extent. We’re not really going to make any lasting progress until that trio is dealt with head-on.
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