Getting Greener All the Time

Our new car was our big green move. We got a Honda Fit and love it. All four of us fit perfectly into this subcompact and it's fun to drive. A week later, we are still running around on the free tank of gas they gave us at Stevenson Honda.

It's been more than a decade since we bought a car so now we have a very sad old car in the driveway. (That is not actually our car in the photo.) We decided to donate it because the tax deduction is worth more than we would get on a trade-in and I already listed it on Craigslist and got no response.

And that's when we discovered that there is a huge scam surrounding car donations. If you Google "donate car," you get a lot of places that will pick up your car and claim to donate it to charity. But according to the group of Moms that run Car-Donation-Scams.com most of these outfits sell these cars for profit. To make matters worse, you probably can't even take the tax deduction on those donations because of updated tax law designed to foil these operations.

So what's a green girl to do? Donate to a real charity. Many of them take cars as well as other goods. We chose Habitat for Humanity. Our car will help actual people in need and we'll get the tax deduction.