Before Mark Cuban splurged on sports teams and private jets, he drove cars that didn’t cost him more than $200.He even got one for free, Cuban told Bill Maher on a December episode of the Club Random Podcast. One of his first cars, a 1977 Fiat X1/9 with holes in the floorboard, died after his cross-country move from Indiana to Dallas in 1982, he said. He had to hitch rides with friends until, one day, they found an abandoned car on the side of the road.He made his friends pull over. The car was unlocked, and he noticed an envelope stuffed with loan papers sitting on the front seat.”I knew from my own personal experience that someone had abandoned [the car], because they couldn’t make the payment,” Cuban said. The next day, he called officials at the bank, told them he found a car they were looking for and offered to take over the payments. They agreed, he said.The strategy isn’t exactly replicable, Cuban noted: You can’t rely on finding a working abandoned car and acquiring it legally, and it’s harder now to call up a bank and actually speak to a real person.Other money-saving hacks from Cuba …
