The right thing to do:<br><br>Offer a bit of advice about how, in the next few months' time while awaiting one's Prius, to obtain top dollar for a trade when the new car lands OR offer advice on how to market the car retail so YOU benefit from its sale to the next owner.<br><br>The wrong thing to do:<br><br>Take a lot less for your trade at a dealership and then gripe about it. <br><br>My common sense version: <br>The thing is, you have months and months to do your homework on a trade in and what you might be able to get for it. You Prius buyers are lucky... often, folks have so little time to do this as their cars are either already here or very close to coming in for sale. No one ever has MONTHS to shop for a better buyer, better loan, or better places to sell their own car. <br><br>There are many good places to post a car online, such as yahoo.com, excite.com classifieds, autotraderonline.com free ads, and recycler.com, also free. I have offered to those who order thru me their own set of digital photos on their trade ins, and the URLs for the free online ads. All you need is an email address and a little bit of the ol' web savvy. <br><br>In my fleet department, no one wants to begrudge anyone the chance to make a few extra bucks on their own car. Not here. At my pricing for all cars, I leave no room for "extra" on trades. Bottom line with me is really bottom line. You want more for a trade, you keep that thing and sell it!<br>Just understand that it is YOU that gets the folks standing you up on weeknights or weekends for appointments, emailing foolish opinions about your car, asking stupid questions about "will you finance it for me?" and worse: people expecting that you are somehow desperate to sell and attempting to manipulate your good common sense. Or those who set up appointments at mechanics who are schooled to find problems that are not there.<br><br>I post enough new and used cars to many sites on the internet, and KNOW of this all to be true. This is why I traded my last three cars in. <br><br>Bottom line from one with over 2 decades experience: You think it's worth more, go get it!! It's YOUR car to begin with, and no one knows your own car better than you.<br><br>Dianne

Your missing the boat. Give the car away. Here in California with middle income tax rates at 28% federal plus 9.8% state, a donation of a car with a retail value of $3,000 is worth $1,134 in reduced taxes, with no hassle, and your a really good person to your favorite charity.<br><br>I've given away one car already and will most likely do so with my wife's 89 Corolla when the Prius comes.<br><br>waiting

I've thought about donating the Corolla, but I figured I'd get about as much in tax savings as I'd net if I drove it into CarMax and took cash for it, without the hassle of figuring it all out on my taxes.<br><br>I looked into car donations, and in most cases the charity just wholesales the car to a broker and gets a fraction of what it is worth. If I really wanted to make a donation, I'd sell the car (HAH!) myself and give the money to charity. But what I really want is somewhere near what the car is worth so I can pay some bills.<br><br>Barbara

If you take it to CARMAX, you won't get anywhere near what the car is worth. They look to make several thousamd dollars on each sale, so they cannot offer you a very good price. Also, as a charitable donation, you get the fair market value for the car not what the charity sells the car for at some auction.

&gt;&gt; as a charitable donation, you get<br>&gt;&gt; the fair market value for the car <br><br>Actually, you get a tax *deduction* for fair market value. Depending on your tax bracket your actual cash savings may be much less. Financially and spiritually it still makes sense in a lot of cases though.