I watched this story last night on NBC Nightly News. I was amazed at how much stupidity could be combined in a single story. It begins by saying the auto lease was the key to millions of Americans purchasing more car than they could afford, and if you watch the follow up story, it ends with auto dealers talking about how it is their most profitable way to conduct business.

The end to many lease programs is prompted by the dramatic drop in value of SUVs and trucks. The premise of a lease is the lease company will have a vehicle return at the end of the lease period that is worth a given value. With skyrocketing gas prices, vehicles that are not fuel efficient are dropping just as fast as gas is going up making it impossible to accurately predict the end of lease value.

Going back to my days of selling cars, I remember how we always pushed the lease. When selling the lease, we steered the entire conversation to monthly payments. Once we found a payment that the customer was happy with, all the terms were set up to ensure we sold the car to the lease company at full MSRP thus getting the extra large commission that almost never happened on a typical purchase.  The finance department would also set everything up ensuring they made the maximum profit. Leasing a vehicle is the most expensive way to drive a car and I am glad to see it going away!

As bad as this is, I love the Daily Show and Colbert Report. While I don’t watch now that I am home (I won’t watch it in front of the kids); I rarely missed an episode on AFN while in Afghanistan.

For those of you who don’t follow the shows, Jon Stewart is an anti-war guy who portrays a reasonable argument against the war in Iraq…in the form of comedy. Last year he ran several segments called “You’re Not Helping,” portraying some stupid things those on the far left are doing that actually hurt the cause of ending the Iraq War. Code Pink, MoveOn and many similar are frequent features.

When I first heard the motive for the shooting in Tennessee, that phrase immediately came to mind. He is frustrated with the liberals so he walks into a church he perceives to be liberal and massacres a bunch of people. Yeah…you’re not helping!

The test project is underway…Amy added Google Adsense to my sidebar this morning…then spent much of the day filtering out rip off loan ads, which was our primary concern in placing advertising on this site.

The good news is I will be writing more often and expanding the material I comment on in order to draw new readers. I will continue my series of updates on my start up business and track my debt elimination progress even more vigorously. I will even throw in some helpful consumer commentary. Let me know what you think of it all.

With one week under my belt, I am realizing just how difficult this new venture is going to be. After working until 2:00 am every night this week and getting up at 6:00 am every morning, I am tired. My efforts for one week netted me just over $1,000…all of which is allocated to market the 52 upcoming courses I secured the venues for earlier in the week.

While money is extremely tight right now, I am very optimistic. I have one signed contract with an agency and agreed to four more that I will be writing this weekend. Next week I will be sending out more flyers…this time to more than 650 agencies across Missouri. For the next three weeks I will be calling and visiting agencies promoting individual courses and contracting before I hit the classroom again.

The next 60 days are critical. In retrospect, I wish I would have put my debt snowball on hold and piled up more cash before I dove in head first. Since that isn’t an option now, I just need to push forward.  All of my interactions to this point have been positive, I just need more of them…lots more!

The four of us awoke early this morning to discover some seriously thick Missouri humidity. Despite the heat, Sarah quickly got to work helping us set up while Jeremiah avoided the manual labor by pretending to cook breakfast.

After getting set up, we received the early morning barrage of professional garage sale shoppers. Although their numbers were high, their purchases were not. By 9:00 am we were setting on $9 of pure profit.

The next hour was interesting to say the least. We had laid a few Lazy Susan mugs and T-Shirts out. After witnessing a shopper’s passive interest in a T-Shirt, I offered her a whole box for $20. Once she accepted I offered another smaller box for $10 which she took as well. Meantime, another group of customers there at the same time asked how much for a mug…I replied that I could give them a great deal on a case of mugs. They bit and we had in a matter of minutes made the morning worth while.

By 11:00 am the heat had set in and the customers had departed, so we packed up. The morning’s efforts were worth approximately $110 of grocery money and we still have our roll top desk and bunk bed to put on craigslist.