Social Security Snoops, Cars for Parts & Zoning Out

I just got off of the web site run by Social Security. It was scary. It all started when I realized I might be getting older. I decided to check and see just how much I wasn’t going to get from Social Security.

By the way, have you ever wondered why they keep saying Social Security is going broke but never say the Government is going broke or Welfare is going broke, or the Military is going broke?

The first question was, “Where were you born? Then, “Where did you first attend school?” I am a little concerned that they keep this information at their finger tips. The next one really concerned me, “What model was your first car?”

Not only should they not know that, it’s a tough question to answer. The first car I purchased was a 1917 Dodge Brothers touring car. This was made long before most cars had models. Models didn’t really catch on until the Model T caught on.

In any case, I lied and claimed my first car was a model A which was actually my third car and my third form of transportation that actually ran. The Dodge Brothers and the Model T never ran again until after I sold them. Both the pony and horse I had ran but not much better than the Dodge Brothers and the T.

My fourth or maybe fifth car was a 1966 VW named Gretchen which didn’t run either until I wrecked my father’s VW and switched the engines. Gretchen was great. Thinking some more, Gretchen was probably my sixth or seventh car and was the first that I actually licensed and drove legally on the highway.

In trying to keep this accurate, the pre-Gretchen cars were the 1917 Dodge Brothers, then a Model T, followed by a 1939 Ford, a 1951 Ford pickup, a 1947 Dodge Sedan, and Clementine, my 1940 Plymouth pickup. That means Gretchen was number 7. Well, she was number 7 unless you count the ones that weren’t all there.

Enough of that. Do you suppose Social Security has all of this in their files? More importantly, if they didn’t do you suppose they do now?

I also have to do a clarification from last week. I said, I didn’t have hobbies because hobbies are activities “undertaken for pleasure in leisure time” and that “I enjoy everything I do but the motive is profit and profit is pleasure.”

The mistake is I did not explain that profit is not the reason for the project. The purpose of money is to make projects possible. The money is not the end, it is the means. Profit is nothing but a way of keeping score and really doesn’t mean anything.

Along the same lines I just had a bad experience with a car. Now, I understand that most people expect to lose money when they sell a car, BUT I don’t. I expect to fix them and drive them and then sell them at a profit. My goal is to drive for free.

I’ve got it down to free except for gas, tires, insurance and licenses but I am never supposed to sell a car for less than I have in it (including a small profit). Last week I sold one for $100 less than I’d paid and didn’t even cover transportation and profit. I don’t know what happened. I must have had a senior moment or something.

I think what happened was the young man who wanted it had one just like it and he wanted to do what I usually do which is buy one for parts and keep the other one running almost forever without additional expense. I must have had a flashback to buying my first set of parts. I call it buying “one of each” which means buying a car instead of parts.

In any case, he is a nice young man and has the right idea of driving cheaply and I must have had some sort of relapse. I just hope this isn’t a trend or something I am going to do again.

This brings me to a total of five cars and trucks that I’ve bought and sold in the past 45 years that I haven’t made a profit on. Considering there have been a few hundred or so of them I suppose the percentage isn’t bad-still, I consider each of the five of them to be a personal failure. Let’s hope this is the last one.