In the October 2014 issue of Car and Driver magazine, they have an article “Space Exploration” comparing the space-efficiency of “hatchbacked” vehicles – hatchbacks, wagons, crossovers, SUVs, vans. Their definition of space efficiency was carrying capacity compared to the amount of ground a vehicle occupies. Specifically, the maximum seats-down cargo volume divided by footprint (length times width). Trucks don’t count.

I can’t find a version of the chart online, so here is my rundown of the findings:

• The most space-efficient vehicles were cargo vans usually bought for commercial use. Not surprising, as these are often seen as airport shuttles. Examples are the Ram Promaster, Mercedez-Benz Sprinter, and Ford Transit. The extended body, high roof versions of these vans have ratios as high as 3.69.
• After that, the minivans rule: Toyota Sienna 1.38, Honda Odyssey 1.33, Chrysler Town & Country 1.30. (Nissan Quest was only 1.00.)
• Huge SUVs are next: GMC Acadia 1.06, Ford Expedition 1.08, Toyota Sequoia 1.06.
• After that, things get more interesting. The Scion xB is 0.86 is actually a bit better than the Toyota Highlander at 0.83 and the Mercedes GL at 0.79. The Honda Fit is 0.71, on par with the Jeep Grand Cherokee at 0.68 and Audi Q7 at 0.67. Relatively disappointing small cars include the Nissan Juke 0.46, Ford C-Max 0.49, and Kia Sportage 0.62.
• Want electric? The Mitsubishi i-MiEV is 0.80 while the Nissan Leaf is 0.35 and Chevrolet Volt is a paltry 0.12. I would note the MiEV is tiny though, it looks like a golf cart driving down the road.

As you might expect, in general tall and boxy shapes make for high numbers. Space-efficiency isn’t everything, but it can be an important factor to consider if you have a growing family or certain hobbies. It would have been nice if they also used the alternative definition to be cargo volume divided by base retail price (space per dollar).

In the past month, both of my Western Digital 1 TB external backup hard drives have failed on me. This was pretty disconcerting considering I bought two of them specifically so they could be redundant backups. I was a bit lazy and barely had enough time to transfer my data while the last drive was limping along.

I turns out there isn’t that much data on real-world hard drive failure rates. When searching, many reference this post by online backup site BackBlaze which has owned over 25,000 hard drives (also see their recent update). In both posts, Seagate drives had much higher failure rates than Hitachi or Western Digital. However, other tech experts point out the flaws in drawing that conclusion. Brands don’t matter as much when they keep merging with each other anyway.

Really, the only conclusions I would confidently draw are (1) don’t buy specific “low power consumption” models of Seagate hard drives and (2) expect hard drives to fail on you. Imagine how little can go wrong in order to fit 4 terabytes of information on a little spinning disk. This Backblaze post is the one you should actually read. It cites other studies that say hard drives fail much more often than the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) statistics put out by manufacturers, and it is hard to predict impending failures even with regular hard drive checks. Here is a chart showing that hard drives tend to fail either within the first year, or after 3 years.

Here is a chart of survival rates over time.

That’s roughly 1 in 5 drives failing within 4 years, and maybe half will fail within 6 years. That starts to make a service like Crashplan at $60 a year more palatable.

In the end, Backblaze still buys Seagate drives because their cheaper price more than offsets any expected unreliability. Perhaps that is what consumers should do as well. Forget brands, buy whatever is cheapest, keep redundant backups in expectation of failure, and save your receipts. Of course, hard drive warranties keep getting shorter and are now usually only a year long (perhaps an admission of their unreliability?). Here’s my plan:

• Purchase with an American Express that offers their Extended Warranty which will double the manufacturer’s warranty, up to one year.
• Purchase from Costco whatever is on sale, due to their generous return policy. While even 90 days is relatively good, but I also do not see hard drives included explicitly in their 90-day electronics return policy – “We guarantee your satisfaction on every product we sell with a full refund. The following must be returned within 90 days of purchase for a refund: televisions, projectors, computers, cameras, camcorders, touchscreen tablets, MP3 players and cellular phones.” Do accessories count?
• Keep my important documents and family pictures on multiple formats (cloud, flash drives, multiple hard drives).

Here’s another installment of what I would tell my kids about pursuing financial freedom. Read all of my early retirement lessons here. I’ve already covered housing, so the next big expense that comes to mind is cars. This is a revised version of a older post.

If you want to achieve early retirement, my rule of thumb is that you should only pay CASH for cars. By cash I don’t mean retirement savings in an IRA, I’m talking about actual cash sitting in the bank while otherwise still making timely progress towards your other financial goals. I’ve never had a car loan. When I buy a car, I write a check or hand over a wad of cash.

Don’t you like cars? I’ve been a Car and Driver subscriber off and on for 20 years now. I wanted to become an ASE-certified mechanic and even applied to automotive school, but settled on being a mechanical engineering major. But I also know that cars are the biggest area where the price paid vs. utility derived (i.e. value) can get completely out of whack. While a BMW M3 is a beautiful example of precision German engineering, unless your commute involves an unrestricted Autobahn it won’t get you to work any faster than my old 2001 Pontiac.

I’m also a proponent of individual choice according to personal priorities. Great cars are beautiful manmade creations, just like great buildings and great bridges. (Top Gear reference!) You may derive an obscene amount of personal joy out of your car. Okay, so buy it with cash saved up after you put 15%+ of your pay aside for retirement. An old classmate drove a 12-year-old Porsche 944 that he worked on himself.

So I can never buy a new car? Again, if you have the cash knock yourself out. My parents are the buy-new-and-drive-for-a-decade type, and they’ve done well with that philosophy. The car-buying process is not known for being pleasurable, so buying new with cash and driving it into the ground can often be good enough.

Reliable car sweet spot? The “true cost” of a car is the sum of depreciation, maintenance costs, gas, and insurance. New cars hurt you on the depreciation front. Going too cheap may result in high maintenance costs overwhelming the low depreciation. Any fuel-efficient car between 3 and 7 years old with good maintenance records seems like a reasonable choice to me. Buy it from a private party on AutoTrader or Craigslist, get it checked out by a trusted mechanic, use one of the many pricing guides available. Modern cars can easily go past 10 years and 100,000 miles now with proper maintenance.

I personally like the idea of a used GM, Ford, or Mazda model. This is because I bought a Pontiac Grand Prix for under $9,000 at 3 years old and 35,000 miles (company car went off-lease). Even though this was the base model of a struggling-and-now-defunct domestic brand, it ran for another 9 years with the only major repairs being broken power window actuators. Essentially, I now believe that the used car pricing market adjusts adequately for reliability. Hondas and Toyotas are certainly more reliable but there is no way I could get a 3-year-old Camry for $9,000.

What if I only have 50 bucks and need a car for work? My first advice would be to try harder to find alternatives. Public transportation may be a hassle, but I dislike the idea of working past 65 even more. Can you vanpool or carpool? Could you (gasp) bike or walk? Second of all, watch out. All kinds of shady shenanigans happen if you have a low credit score and need help financing.

If you absolutely have to finance a car, bring your own financing from a reputable credit union like PenFed or Hanscom FCU, which currently offers used car loans starting at 1.49% APR. Negotiate only on price, not monthly payments. Make the loan term 3 years or less.

Again, this rule of thumb is targeted at those folks to want to escape the rat race early. You can still have the $40,000 luxury vehicle, but you’ll have to plan ahead and save for it. Then, when you’re staring at a nice $40,000 balance on your bank statement, it becomes much easier to weigh clearly the value of the car vs. writing a huge check.

You may have heard this before, but never buy anything based on monthly payments – that’s the same logic that encourages just making the minimum payment on credit card debt and spawned rent-to-own furniture! Don’t fool yourself into believing you can afford a car just because the monthly lease payment seems manageable. Did you know that over 70% of Mercedes-Benz C-classes are leased? There are many people who spend big chunks of their income every year on cars when they could have a paid-off mortgage instead.

Imagine how much more practical car ownership would be if everyone had to pay cash. Think of car debt like credit card debt – something to be avoided if at all possible. If you already have it, work to pay off as soon as possible.