First things first, I’ll admit I am not a car guy. Sure I’ve changed my own oil a few times and replaced the rear brake lights, but that’s pretty much it. But even though I’m not a DIY car guy, I do like to save money. If you’re buying a used car, here are a few tips and resources that will help you get a fair price.

CarComplaints
Just like the quality of wine or sports teams vary from year to year, so do cars. Check out CarComplaints to see what car owners are complaining about. This was actually one of the considerations of why I chose a 2007 Accord vs. a 2008. The 2007 listed only 30 complaints about its brakes while the 2008 had over 1,000 complaints.

Used 2007 Honda Accord EXL V6 Sedan

Dealership websites, Craigslist, and AutoTrader
This is a no brainer, but checking Craigslist and AutoTrader is a good way just to get an initial sense of what sellers (private and dealers) are offering their cars for. Then check out dealership websites in your area to see their inventory. Keep in mind the websites sometimes don’t have all the cars on the site. Some of the cars might already be sold so check in advance before driving down there.

CarGurus
CarGurus is a great resource because the site analyzes over 2,000,000 daily listings for you and gives you an idea of how competitive the price offered is. The site navigation is clean and the format provides all the necessary information for you to make an informed decision.

Kelly Blue Book
Kelly Blue Book has been around for a while is one of the most trusted websites to get accurate values on used cars. Their CPO or certified pre-owned section also provides a lot of data and reviews for you to compare.

Edmunds
Edmunds is similar to KBB, but also offers a few other goodies.

• True Market Value – Besides the standard aggregated listings, Edmunds gives the TMV or True Market Value of the vehicle. They get this value by factoring in actual dealership sales across the United States, dealer inventory levels, local market sales conditions, economic trends like rising gas prices, and also unpublished incentives.
• True Cost of Ownership – The Edmunds TCO This is a great way to see an estimate of how much it will cost to own the car over a 5-year period. Edmunds takes into consideration depreciation, taxes and fees, fuel, maintenance, repairs, financing, and insurance costs. If you can’t decide between two cars, this data can really help with the final decision.
• Auto Loan Calculator – The auto loan calculator helps you see an estimate of what the total loan amount will be and also your monthly payments (taxes included). It’s a great resource for buying a car because you don’t have a sales person looking over your shoulder and plus you can play with the numbers to see what’s right for you. And if you want to go the other way and first see how much car you can afford based on monthly payments, Edmunds has the how much car can I afford app.

Car Forums
Check some of the popular car forums on the Internet to see what current owners have to say about their own cars. It may take a little digging, but often times you’ll find all sorts of helpful stories that provide insight to that particular car. Car Forums List provides a good place to start, but there are lots more.

CNET Car Reviews
The CNET car reviews provide comprehensive reviews balanced with good video of the car in action. They also pay special attention to any technology advances in the vehicle.

Financing
Check the dealership and main manufacturer website for special APR financing on certified cars. There was a 1.5% difference between what the dealership offered as opposed to what American Honda Financial offered.

Negotiating the Price of a Used Car
Probably the last place you want to negotiate a car price is at the dealership. They are pros at this and almost always you will be fighting a losing battle. Even if you are informed and have your price in mind, the dealerships wins most of the time. The best resource is old school “email”. Email the Internet Manager to negotiate a better price. It is far less confrontational and since they usually get paid differently than floor sales people, you can get usually work out a better price.

• Secrets of a professional negotiator
• How to get a used car bargain

CarFax and AutoCheck
Once you have found the exact car and have test driven it, it’s essential to view its automotive history. CarFax and AutoCheck are the two best sources for access to detailed history reports. They use the VIN (vehicle identification number) to pull data from their national database. Nowadays many car dealerships include this information for you to see already, but not all. Both sites charge a one-time or monthly fee to get the data. I found AutoCheck to be very helpful since it showed a couple things that didn’t come up in the CarFax. The one-time check didn’t make much sense for me so I bought the monthly pass since I was checking multiple cars.

iPhone Apps
The first couple times I went to the dealership and went to the negotiating table, I wasn’t able to run some numbers. This is because I didn’t have my laptop in front of me. Instead I used a handy iPhone App to help me do the calculations. There are a bunch of free apps which help you calculate the car loan. Just search under auto calculators.

Auto Insurance Quotes
If you’re still deciding between a few makes and models, it helps to get auto insurance rate quotes from a few sources. You could try Progressive or Geico or your existing insurance provider, but you might be surprised just how much variance there is between each particular make and model.

If you have other tips or resources for buying a used car, add them in the comments section.

You can think of Google Alerts like a continuous search for a specific keyword (your choosing) and the results get sent to you automatically via email.

Google allows you to set up lots of these types of searches (up to 1,000) and it can be really useful. And if you’re worried about information overload, don’t worry because Google allows you to manage how many and how often these alerts get sent to you.

I also like Google Alerts because it’s a simple yet powerful tool that is free to use and doesn’t require that you have a gmail account.

Here are just a few ways you can use Google Alerts:

Car recalls
I don’t trust the dealership or car manufacturers to alert me when there is a recall for my car. I just bought a used 2007 Honda Accord and I set up an alert for “2007 Honda Accord recall.” Now, whenever there is a new recall, I’ll know.

Sports
I like hearing about any trade rumors for the sports teams that I root for (Giants, 49ers, and Golden State Warriors). I have an alert for each of these i.e. “Golden State Warriors trade rumors.”

Your own name
Start being proactive in protecting your online presence by creating an alert for your own name.

At the office
If there is a keyword or term used in your industry that you want to track, set up an alert for that. In a short period of time, you’ll be the most knowledgeable person on that in the office.

Video Games
How nice would it be to get “Call of Duty advanced tips” sent to you periodically. Your buddies won’t know what hit them.

If your answer is “no,” then stop here, do not pass go, do not collect $200 (homage to Monopoly, one my favorite boardgames of all time).

If your answer is “yes,” then keep reading because the answer is quite simple, watch or listen to the interviews on Mixergy.com — all of them.

Want to learn how to start an Internet business, how to raise venture capital, how to build community, how to get links to your site, how to get people to pay for services, how to create compelling content?….there’s an interview for that!

Mixergy.com, “home of the ambitious upstart,” provides free video interviews (at least for now) with successful Internet entrepreneurs. The interviews are conducted by Andrew Warner, an accomplished Internet entrepreneur in his own right with his own fascinating roller coaster of a story where he took his company to $30+ million a year in sales.

Mixergy.com has 100+ interviews on the site and is chock full of nuggets of wisdom for entrepreneurs. Andrew asks all the tough questions and really tries to get to the heart of what made the entrepreneur successful with their respective website business. He has done interviews with people who have been-there-done-that and is slowly growing a valuable library for startups to gain insight.

I’ve watched or listened to just about every interview on Mixergy. Below are some of the interviews on the site I recommend.

I also encourage you to follow @AndrewWarner on Twitter to get the latest updates on who he is interviewing next.

My suggested interviews on Mixergy.com

Wikipedia’s Founder On How The Site Was Built & Promoted. – with Jimmy Wales

How Threadless Got People To Buy Over A Million Tshirts A Year. – With Jeffrey Kalmikoff

How 99designs Built A $5+ Million Marketplace In 16 Months. – With Matt Mickiewicz

How A Quiet Developer Built Goodreads.com Into Book Community Of 2.6+ Million Members – with Otis Chandler

How To Build Your Online Community –The Mateo Gutierrez Interview

How To Erect A Pay Wall That Generates Revenue – with Wil Schroter

Why This VC Showered With Construction Workers And Why You Must Also Be Willing To! – With Mark Suster

How Being Scrappy Made Grasshopper Profitable Within 2 Months – with Siamak Taghaddos

How The Owner Of “Fail Blog” And “I Can Has Cheezburger” Keeps Racking Up Wins – With Ben Huh

How Maponics’ Founder Learned To Sell To Companies Like Google & CitySearch – With Darrin Clement Maponics

The JibJab Story. Maybe The Most Inspiring Mixergy Interview Ever! – With Gregg Spiridellis

Bootstrapping Lessons From 37 Signals — The Jason Fried Interview

Small Changes That Helped UserVoice Raise $800,000 From Investors. – With Marcus Nelson

What Does It Take To Build A Successful Online Company? – With Michael Jones

How A Musician Built A $22 Million Dollar Business From His Home. –The Derek Sivers Interview

How Blogs Helped The Four Hour Work Week Become a Best Seller – The Timothy Ferriss Interview

• Grow a Mo: It’s an excuse not to shave and a great conversation starter at the bar. Chicks dig a dude down with charity!
• Mo your friends: If you don’t want to grow a mustache you can Mo your friends with this new Facebook application
• Cheers to your prostate: Try these Mo-inspired cocktails named after some of the best Mo’s in pop-culture

The Burgundy
1 1/2 parts Canadian Club Whisky
4 parts Ginger Ale
Splash of Cranberry Juice

The Flanders
1 1/2 parts Canadian Club Whiskey
1/2 part sweet Vermouth
Dash of bitters

The Bandit
1 1/2 parts Canadian Club Whisky
4 parts Club Soda
Lemon

The Magnum
1 1/2 parts Canadian Club Whisky
4 parts Ginger Ale
Lime

10. Intensity Is Underrated

Whatever your routine is, do it hard.  (After you’ve gotten the form down.)  When I say hard, I mean hard.  You should feel like you couldn’t get another rep out of your set.  If you can do 3 more than your plan calls for, then you need to increase your weight.  And heavy weight helps your progress.  To get the proper hormonal response from weight training for building muscle, losing fat, and gaining strength you have to really push yourself.  This also means that you don’t skip workouts.  I realize that life happens, and you might have to miss a day.  But with your 3x per week schedule, you can miss a day and make it up to stick to 3x/week.  If you do get to the gym and “don’t feel too motivated”, you need to psyche yourself up.  A short intense workout is far better than a long half-effort one.

11. Rest

There are two types or rest:  in between sets and in between workouts.  For rest in between workouts, that’s taken care of by only going 3x a week (see previous point).  Muscle doesn’t grow during the exercise.  It grows AFTER the exercise and if you don’t let the fibers heal, you’ll see minimal progress.  As far as rest in between sets, this is a subjective area.  Generally, if you are going for fat loss as your primary goal, you want to have only 1 minute max in between sets.  For strength or muscle gain, you might want 2 or 3 minutes.  But remember point #3?  Stick to the program.

12. Water Helps Things Grow

Muscles (and most of the rest of the body tissue) is mostly water.  To build muscle, you need to drink a ton of water.  Many pro bodybuilders, in a bulking phase, will drink a couple gallons of water every day.  You don’t need that much, but a glass of water (not soda, not juice) every 2 hrs would be a good idea.  And check out How to Harness the Healing Power of Water for Muscle Health.

13. Cardio AFTER Weights

I’m a firm believer in cardio, not just weights.  While this is not an article on cardio, the take-away point is that you should do your cardio after your weights.  Remember, you need a rest day in between workouts (and rest means no major exertion).   So do your cardio on the same day as your weight training.  My ideal is doing weights, then eat some good carbs and protein (see next point), and do cardio 30 minutes later.  Or you can do weights early in the day and cardio late in the day.

14. Eat:  Protein  + Slow Carbs

Entire books have been written about the bodybuilder diet, but I’ll have to be super brief.  When trying to build muscle and strength, you want about 1 gram of lean protein for every pound of bodyweight.  If you are obese, then you might want a little less protein (since so much of your existing weight is fat and you’ll need to watch calories by reducing all your intake).  For carbs, you want to avoid processed food and processed sugar.  Ideal carbs are veggies, whole grains, oatmeal.  If your goal is muscle building, eat about twice as much carbs as protein.  If you are trying to get lean, you can dial it down quite a bit.  But as a beginner weight trainer, I do not recommend super-low carb diets.  Again, this topic is wide and deep and there’s no way I can do justice in this short article!

15. Sleep To Grow

By committing yourself to getting in shape, you need to commit to sufficient sleep.  That means calling it a night early if you are working out the next morning.  It does not mean making up for lost sleep by having 4 cups of coffee.  You may even find that you need an extra 30 minutes or so of sleep once you start weight training.  Listen to your body so that it can heal between workouts and be ready for the next.

16. Patience – The Results Will Come

This is the most important mental rule.  Patience.  If you are impatient, you’ll give up too soon.  But the good news, if you are truly a beginner, is that if you stick to your plan (assuming your plan follows the philosophy of this article), then you are going to see gains pretty quickly.  But it might not be the way you think.  Gains come in three flavors:  how you look, how you feel, and what you can do.  Pay attention because you might be expecting gains in one area and before you give up, maybe you’ve gained in another.  And as an advance warning – after about 3 to 6 months, you’ll probably plateau and need to re-examine your workout.  But that’s a topic for another post…

17. Get A Training Buddy

Unless you are an unusually self-motivated guy, you’ll have more success if you find a buddy with similar goals to workout with.  On your slow days, he’ll push you and vice versa.  Even better is to find someone more advanced than you who’s willing to take you under their wing (even if it’s only for 1 of your workouts) but that’s hard to find.  If you can’t find a buddy to do this with you, do it anyway – don’t use the lack of a training partner as an excuse to get off the couch!

18. Don’t Judge A Trainer By His/Her Physique

If you decide to get a trainer, that’s great.  Present the program you plan to use and see what they think.  Then quiz them and see if their philosophy matches this list.  If not, find another trainer.  Some trainers try to get too creative and jump onto fads.  But the best practices have been tested for decades.  And don’t judge the trainer by their physique – there are some incredibly good trainers who might not look the way you want to look.  They need to be in good shape of course, and they need to be weight trainers themselves.  But going for the trainer who looks like a Men’s Health cover model could backfire as they may be the least knowledgeable of the bunch.

19. You Get What You Measure

You need a training log where you record what exercises you did, how many sets, how many reps, what weight, etc.  I was traveling recently and went to a commercial (chain) gym.  Other than me, there was only one other person in the entire gym (out of over 100 people across 3 days) who had a training log with them, methodically tracking progress.  And guess who the two best physiques were in the gym?

This article was written by Darrin Clement with World Fitness Network. World Fitness Network focuses on the art and science of building lean muscle mass – and an awesome physique. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to the World Fitness Network Blog and get a free ebook.