Tuesday, January 1, 2030

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to Stose's Price is Right blog!

Greetings! Welcome to my little slice of the Internet. You're probably here either to read about my experience as a contestant on The Price is Right or to read my Ultimate Strategy Guide to all the games. All the links you need are below. You are welcome to comment as you desire, just be respectful and avoid swearing. Thanks!

My experience as a contestant

The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Preparing for the tax bill coming on game show winnings

Welcome!

If you're reading this, you've probably won something on a game show. First off, congrats! Secondly, you've probably been warned a large tax bill is coming. How do you prepare for this? That's what this post is about.

Avoiding an underpayment penalty

The first thing you want to do is adjust your withholding at work to avoid an underpayment penalty. Details about how to that are here:

https://stoseontpir.blogspot.com/2025/02/avoiding-federal-tax-penalties-on-game.html

How much will you owe?

You've set your withholding to avoid a penalty and you know a large tax bill is coming early next year. You may be wondering exactly how much larger your tax bill will be due to your game show winnings. Unfortunately, it depends on too many factors to give a generic answer to that. However, we can calculate an upper bound. The maximum federal tax rate is, as I type this in early 2025, 37%. Most people aren't in that tax bracket, but we'll use that to calculate our upper bound. Simply multiply your winnings by 37% and that will be your maximum possible federal tax.

Example: You won $50,000. Your maximum federal tax liability on those winnings is 37%*$50,000 = $18,500

What do you do with the money you will owe the IRS?

What you do with the money you know you're going to owe the IRS depends on how good you are at saving money.

If you can't help spending money

First off, I'm not judging you! This is mathematically worse than the method below, but if you're the type who knows you're going to spend money if you have it, then pay the tax amount calculated above to the IRS as an estimated tax payment as soon as you receive your winnings. Then, if 37% ended up being more than you actually owed, you'll get the overage back as a refund when you file your taxes next year. You can make an estimated tax payment here:

https://www.irs.gov/payments/direct-pay-with-bank-account .

Note: If you make an estimated tax payment, you still need to adjust your withholding as described in the previous post!

If you can save money

If you are the type who's able to put money in an account and not spend it, then take the maximum tax amount calculated above and put it in a high yield savings account (HYSA) as soon as you receive your winnings; not only are HYSAs risk-free, as of early 2025, they'll give you somewhere around 3.5-4% interest on your money while you're waiting to give it to the IRS. If you already have an HYSA, see if your bank lets you open a separate account so the tax money stays separate from your other HYSA money. Keep the money in that account until you fill out your taxes next year and find out how much you owe. Then pay the IRS the amount due, move the rest of the money into your "normal" accounts, and put it towards life.

Example: You put $18,500 from the example above into an HYSA account earmarked for taxes. Due to interest, it has risen to $18,870 when you file your taxes next year. After filing, you discover you owe "only" $9,463 in taxes. Pay that $9,463 to the IRS and take the remaining $9,407 and do whatever you like with it.

Note: Do not invest this money! Individual stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, cryptocurrency, etc. all have the risk of going down in the short term, which you don't want to happen to money you know you're going to need to pay the government next April.

Don't forget about state taxes!

This article is only about federal taxes, but you may have a tax bill that you have to pay to your state as well. The math is similar to before: find the maximum tax rate for the state you live in and multiply it by your winnings to determine the maximum amount you'll have to pay your state. Then save that until early next year.

Avoiding federal tax penalties on game show winnings

Welcome!

Hello there! If you're reading this, you probably won a decent amount on a game show. First off, congratulations! Second, probably everyone and their sister has asked you about paying taxes on your winnings. So you know you need to pay taxes. But when? It's tempting to say you don't need to pay taxes until the year after you receive the winnings (e.g. if you get a check from the game show in early 2025, you don't need to pay tax until April 15, 2026.) This is only partially true. The IRS does not like it when you owe a lot of tax and as such, has published rules about how much you must pay during the year to not be penalized for paying too little. The goal of this post is to help you figure out how to avoid that penalty. As a word of warning, this will get math-y. There's no way to avoid the math for this one.

Disclaimers

This wouldn't be a tax post without disclaimers! Here we go...

This article is about federal tax only. You may need to do something similar for your state, or you may not. Each state varies.
This is only about avoiding penalties for underpaying your taxes during the year. You will still have a large tax bill on your winnings.
Remember you're not taxed on your winnings until you receive them. So if you go on a game show in 2025 but don't receive the winnings until 2026, you don't have to worry about any of this until 2026.
This assumes your paychecks are steady throughout the year. If you get an occasional bonus, that is OK; just make sure you are always looking at a "normal" paycheck and not a bonus one when doing these calculations. Receiving a raise won't break this method either. However, if the amount you receive from "normal" paychecks varies throughout the year, you'll need to talk to someone to tailor the calculations for your case.
I'm assuming you only have one job and that you keep it for the remainder of the year. This article won't handle the case where you have two or more jobs.
This assumes you have a standard W-2 job. If you are self-employed (i.e. you get 1099s), then you need to pay estimated taxes during the year and those rules are different. This article does not apply to self-employment.

BTW, if you're familiar with the concepts and just need the calculations, you can skip ahead to the "Summary" at the very end of this article.

How to deal with under withholding

At a high level, you have four options for dealing with the under withholding caused by your game show winnings:

Pay the penalty. The penalty is, as I type this in early 2025, 7% per year on the amount you should have paid but didn't. After you file your taxes, the IRS will happily calculate this amount for you and send you a bill; some people take this route because they didn't know or they want to avoid the hassle. I don't recommend it.
Ask the IRS to abate the penalty mentioned above. They will sometimes do this if it's your first time underpaying tax, but there are no guarantees.
Pay estimated taxes throughout the year. This mostly applies to people who are self-employed and don't have money withheld. If that's you, you probably already are paying quarterly estimated tax and know how to deal with this or have an accountant who can figure it out for you. Thus, as previously mentioned, this article will not handle self-employment.
Adjust your withholding to avoid the penalty. That's what the rest of this post will be about.

An outline of the process

For those who like to see the big picture first, here's what we're going to do:

Gather the needed documents.
Calculate the minimum you need to withhold to avoid a penalty.
Calculate how much extra you need to withhold per paycheck to get to that number.
Adjust your W-4 to withhold that extra amount.

Step 1: Documents you will need

Before we continue, there are two documents you will need: a) your most recent normal paycheck (i.e. not from a bonus) from work and b) your federal 1040 that you filed early this year. If you used tax software to file your taxes, you should be able to download your 1040 as a PDF from their website. If you haven't yet filled out your taxes for last year, do that first and then come back to this article.

Step 2: Calculating your withholding target

Definition: withholding

Since so much of this process revolves around withholding, we should define that term. Withholding is the money your job takes from your paycheck and gives directly to the IRS without you ever seeing it. There are different types of withholding. If you look at a paycheck, you should see a tax section. It may look something like this:

Or it may look completely and totally different. But you should see similar types of withholding. For purposes of this post, we only care about federal withholding! We don't care about MED (a.k.a. Medicare), OASDI (a.k.a. Social Security), state withholding, or any other withholding. The "Fed Withholding" is the amount we will need to adjust to avoid an underpayment penalty.

Finding last year's AGI and tax liability

There are two numbers you need from your most recent tax return: your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) and total tax liability for last year. Your AGI is effectively how much taxable money you made during the year before figuring in any deductions; your total tax liability is how much you were required to pay to the IRS. Do not confuse your tax liability with the amount you owed or had refunded in 2025! Your early 2025 payment/refund was your tax liability minus the withholding from your job(s) in 2024.

I'm typing this post in early 2025, so if you're reading this because you won a large prize in 2025, you will need these numbers from your 2024 federal 1040 form, which you filed in early 2025. (If you haven't yet filed your 2024 return, do that first, then return to this article.) To find your AGI, look for form 1040, line 11:

And to find your tax liability, look for line 24 on page 2 of your 1040:

The formulas to avoid a penalty

With your AGI and tax liability in hand, we can calculate your withholding target, which is a term I made up for this article to represent the amount you need to have withheld over the course of the year to avoid a penalty. Your withholding target depends on your tax liability and AGI. Here are the rules:

If your AGI last year was $150,000 or less, then to avoid paying a penalty, the amount your job withholds from your paychecks during the year must meet at least one of the following criteria:

Your withholding must be at least 90% of this year's tax liability. OR
Your withholding must be within $1,000 of this year's tax liability, OR
Your withholding must be at least 100% of last year's tax liability.

If your AGI last year was $150,001 or more, then to avoid paying a penalty, the amount your job withholds from your paychecks during the year must meet at least one of the following criteria:

Your withholding must be at least 90% of this year's tax liability. OR
Your withholding must be within $1,000 of this year's tax liability, OR
Your withholding must be at least 110% of last year's tax liability. (In other words, take last year's tax liability, add 10% to it, and round to the nearest dollar.)

If you had a windfall from a game show this year but not last, then your tax liability this year will likely be much higher than it was last year, and number 3 (100% or 110% of last year's tax liability) is very likely to be the least of the three amounts, and no matter what it's the only value of the three you know for sure at this point. Thus the rest of this post will focus on that option.

Examples:

Your AGI last year was $75,514 and your tax liability was $8,454. Your withholding target is 100% of last year's tax liability, or $8,454.
Your AGI last year was $153,222 and your tax liability last year was $26,312. Your withholding target is 110% of last year's tax liability, or $28,943 ($26,312*1.1; note you round to the nearest dollar).

Keep your withholding target handy. We will need it again soon.

Step 3: Calculate extra withholding per paycheck

We're almost ready to calculate how much extra you need to have withheld per paycheck. But first, we need to figure out how much you will have had withheld if you don't make any changes. In order to do this, you need to look at your last paycheck and you need to know how many more normal (i.e. non-bonus) paychecks you'll receive this year (consult a calendar if necessary.) There are two numbers from your paycheck you'll need:

The two numbers are how much was withheld from your last paycheck and how much has been withheld YTD (year to date). In the example above, they are $718.55 and $4,858.26 respectively. As mentioned above, we only care about federal withholding; we're not worried about Medicare, OASDI (Social Security), state withholding, or any other withholding.

Your anticipated withholding, which is a term I made up for this article to describe how much you will have had withheld by the end of the year if you don't change anything, can be calculated as follows:

Anticipated withholding = Withholding per paycheck * number of (non-bonus) paychecks left this year + YTD (year to date) withholding

Example:

Using the paycheck above, if that person has 19 more (non-bonus) paychecks left this year, their anticipated withholding is:

Anticipated withholding = Withholding per paycheck * number of (non-bonus) paychecks left this year + YTD (year to date) withholding

= $718.55*19 + $4,858.26 = $18,510.71

The extra withholding calculation

We can now calculate the extra withholding per paycheck. It is simply this:

Extra withholding = (Withholding target - anticipated withholding) / (# paychecks left this year - 4)

Then round this number up to the next dollar! If you round down, you risk withholding too little.

By the way, what's the minus 4 for in the denominator? It usually takes a couple of paychecks for HR systems to update your withholding after you submit your changes, so I'm accounting for that in the calculation.

What if your anticipated withholding is already greater than your withholding target? Great! If that's the case, then you don't need to do a thing. You're already withholding enough to avoid the underpayment penalty.

Example:

In the example above, let's say that person's withholding target is $21,232. Then:

Extra withholding = (Withholding target - anticipated withholding) / (# paychecks left this year - 4)

= ($21,232 - $18,510.71) / (19-4)

= $2,721.29/15

= $181.42

Then round up to $182.

Step 4: Adjusting your withholding

Now that you know how much you need to increase your withholding by, you need to update your W-4 with that number. Some companies allow you to do this on-line and some require you to go to your HR department and fill out a paper form. Either way, put the extra withholding amount in line 4(c) of the W-4:

Note 1: Do not change anything else about your W-4! If you don't know how you filled it out before, your HR department should be able to provide you a copy of your previous W-4 so you can fill out the new one identically except for the extra withholding.

Note 2: In case you weren't aware, "allowances" are no longer a thing when it comes to W-4s. They were removed in 2020.

And that's it! You have now set up your withholding to avoid an underpayment penalty. But there are some other things you need to be aware of.

Consequences to be aware of

Your paychecks will be lower

This is what "extra withholding" means. The company you work for will be taking that amount of money out of each paycheck and sending it to the IRS on top of the money they are already sending to the IRS on your behalf. For example, if you set "extra withholding" for $182, that means each of your paychecks will be $182 less than what they had been before you made the change. Make sure you plan for this!

You will still have a large tax bill next year

Since we only set your withholding to match last year's taxes, you will still have a large tax bill early next year thanks to your winnings. Save money to pay it! See below for suggestions on that.

Don't forget to reset your withholding next year

Make sure you set a reminder to fill out another W-4 early next January and set the "extra withholding" back to $0.

What about state taxes?

I mentioned at the beginning that this article was only going to cover federal taxes, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention at least something about state taxes. Here are the possibilities:

You live in a state that doesn't have income tax. Rejoice! Just don't forget that if your game show taped in California, they're still going to want their cut even if you don't live there. If your game show taped in another state, you'll have to look up that state's rules.
You live in a state that has an income tax but doesn't have under withholding penalties. Many states let you wait until next April 15 to pay the bill. In this case, save the money you'll owe your state separately from the money you'll owe the IRS.
You live in a state that has an income tax and does have under withholding penalties. If this is the case, you'll have to look up how your state wants you to handle the extra payments during the year you'll need to make to avoid the penalties.

Filing your taxes with game show winnings

In case it helps, I wrote a separate article about how to file your taxes if you won on a California-based game show:

https://stoseontpir.blogspot.com/2024/01/guide-to-taxes-for-california-based.html

Summary

In conclusion, here's just the math if you need it again:

Withholding target = 100% of last year's tax liability if your AGI (adjusted gross income) was $150,000 or less last year
OR
Withholding target = 110% of last year's tax liability if your AGI was $150,001 or more last year
Anticipated withholding = Last (non-bonus) paycheck's federal withholding * number of (non-bonus) paychecks left in the year + YTD (year to date) federal withholding
Extra withholding (per paycheck) = (Withholding target - Anticipated withholding) / (Number of [non-bonus] paychecks left in the year - 4)

If this number is negative, then you don't need to do anything.

Put that extra withholding in line 4(c) of a new W-4, keeping everything else in that form the same as the previous W-4 you filed.
In January of next year, reset line 4(c) of your W-4 to $0.

Phew. That should do it. Let me know if you have any questions!

Friday, January 5, 2024

Filling out taxes if you won something on a California-based game show

Disclaimer: While I am a weird person who likes and studies taxes for fun, I am not a tax professional. Please check with a tax pro if you need specific advice.

Welcome to my game show tax guide! I've met a lot of people in the last couple of years who have won things on game shows (congrats!!) and hopefully this will help you determine what taxes you must file and pay. Some key disclaimers:

As implied by the title, this guide is for game shows that tape in California. The concepts should be similar for game shows that tape in other states, but you will have to check with those states for the details.
This is only for US citizens. I don't know enough about foreign taxes to make a guide for non-US citizens who win something on a US game show.
When I say "winnings," I'm only referring to the winnings you actually kept. You do not have to report or pay taxes on prizes you turned down.
All references to specific forms, schedules, and lines are based on 2024 forms (i.e. the return you fill out in early 2025). They could move to different places in other years.
I'm assuming you lived in one state for all of 2024. Part year residency situations are beyond the scope of this guide.
I'm not covering the question of whether you should have paid estimated taxes during the year or if you will be penalized for not paying them.

Overview of returns to fill out:

Here are the returns you'll have to fill out, based on where you lived in 2024 (or whatever year you won things on the game show):

If you lived in California, you only have to fill out two returns: a federal return and a CA resident return.
If you lived outside CA in a state that doesn't have income taxes, then you need to fill out two returns: a federal return and a CA non-resident return.
If you lived outside CA in a state that does have income taxes, then you need to fill out three forms: a federal return, a CA non-resident return, and a standard resident return for whatever state you lived in.

To start: No matter where you live, and whether you do taxes by hand or by software, you should start by filling out your federal 1040.

Federal taxes

If you won $600 or more, you will receive a 1099-MISC form from your game show that shows how much you won. You don't have to attach this form to your 1040 as the game show will send the IRS a copy of it. If you won less than $600, you probably won't get such a form. You still must report and pay taxes on your winnings. All income is taxable, whether the source of the income reported it to the IRS or not.

The amount you won is considered "ordinary income," meaning it's taxed the same as if you earned it at a job, interest on a bank account, or anything else that's taxable at a normal rate. However, do note you don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare tax on your game show winnings.

If you do taxes yourself, you must report your winnings on Schedule 1, line 8i ("Prizes and Awards.")

If you use tax software to do your taxes, then look in your software for an "other income" or an "unusual income" section and input the amount you won from the game show in the prizes and awards field. I personally don't use tax software, so I don't know exactly where to look in any specific program.

State taxes if you live in California

If you live in California, then you didn't have any taxes taken out on your winnings in advance. You should fill things out in this order:

Start by doing your federal tax form, including your game show winnings as explained above.
Then complete your CA return. There's really no more complexity than normal, because your winnings were included in your federal tax calculations, and thus they will be automatically "transferred" to your CA return as income there. Fill out your CA return as normal; you will likely owe taxes because you haven't paid them yet on the prizes you won.

State taxes if you don't live in California

If you don't live in CA, you should fill things out in this order:

Start by doing your federal tax form, including your game show winnings as explained above.
Fill out a CA non-resident tax return. Even if you didn't win enough to have estimated CA tax taken out of your winnings, CA still wants to know about your winnings and take taxes on them. More details are provided below.
If your state has income taxes, fill out your state income tax return third. You should be able to get a credit for at least some of the taxes you paid to CA. Some details are below.

Details on the CA non-resident tax return.

Hoo boy. If you fill it out yourself, this has at least two parts: first, fill out CA form 540NR schedule CA, then fill out CA form 540NR. Both can be found by going to this website:

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/search/

and search for form "540NR" (without the quotes):

The two forms you need are highlighted below:

Note that you'll need to provide your e-mail address to get both the forms. You should get each form within seconds after you provide it. I don't know why they do that, but they do. Also note you may need some other forms if you had capital gains or other situations you can find by looking at those results.

As mentioned, start with schedule CA. In essence, you will be transferring your income line by line from your federal tax to column A (the left most column), and then stating in column E (the right most column) how much of that money came from CA. If you didn't live in CA and your only CA based income is from the game show, then column E should remain empty except for the prizes and awards section. Here's an example with made up numbers:

Notice column E is blank except for the game show winnings. Also notice the "subtractions and additions" columns--for each column, you'll need to look up whether federal law differs from CA law in terms of how the money is taxed. Usually it's no different, but you can check on the CA website (search for "CA FTB conformity" [without the quotes] for details.)

After schedule CA is done, fill out form 540NR. This is a pretty straightforward form (by US tax standards); just follow the instructions, transferring the data from schedule CA where appropriate. The only catch is whether you had estimated taxes taken out of your winnings. If you won $1500 or more, then CA required you to pay 7% of your winnings in estimated tax, either by taking it out of the cash you won or, if you didn't win enough cash, making you send a check or similar to the game show before you could get your prizes. This 7% is probably above what you actually owe, so you'll likely get money back from CA in that case (I got about 2/3 of my payment back). In any event, you either have received or will receive a form 592-B that indicates exactly how much you won and how much was taken out. The key part of that form is part IV:

That amount goes into form 540NR, lines 83 and 88:

Again, if you won less than $1500, you didn't make any tax pre-payment, you won't get a 592-B form, and lines 83 and 88 should remain blank.

The rest of the form is math. But after you're done filling that form out, you might not be done yet...

Claiming credit in your home state

If you live in a state that taxes your income, then the last step is to fill out your state's income tax form, and you can likely get credit for some or all of the taxes you had to pay in California. Every state is different in the details, but look for a section about taxes paid to another state. For example, in Utah, this is done on a separate form that looks like this:

Don't be surprised if, weeks or months after filing, you get a letter from your home state asking you to send in a copy of your California return. It's nothing to be scared of, just send in a copy of your CA return to prove you paid the taxes to them you claim you paid.

Conclusion

Game show taxes aren't easy, but they are doable. I haven't used tax software to do taxes when game show winnings were involved, but if you have, please let me know how it went! Any questions/corrections/etc. are more than welcome. Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Vend-O-Price

Vend-O-Price

Rules

A prize is shown. Three shelves are shown, each of which has a grocery item. The top shelf has the cheapest item while the bottom shelf has the most expensive item. Then each shelf is revealed to have a certain number of its featured item. The contestant must determine which shelf is the most expensive shelf.

Random fact

For the first couple of playings of this game, they used the old Penny Ante sound effect when revealing the grocery products. You can see the debut playing of the game here:

Win-loss record

Actual (seasons 44-47): 34-33 (50.75%)
What it would be by random chance: 1/3 (33.33%)

The correct shelf to choose was...(seasons 44-47)

The top shelf: 18 playings (26.87%)
The middle shelf: 27 playings (40.30%)
The bottom shelf: 22 playings (32.84%)

Strategy

Much as this is a lame way to end the blog, know the prices of the grocery items. But one thing that can help is to think of this game in terms of ratios; for example, if one shelf has twice as many of a product as another shelf, then the item on the shelf with fewer items must be worth at least twice as much as the item on the shelf with more items to be more expensive.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: 2 for the Price of 1

2 for the Price of 1

Rules

Two prizes are shown, a large prize and a prize with three digits in its price. Two possibilities are shown for each digit in the three digit prize; the contestant can choose one of the digits to be revealed for free. They must correctly choose the other two digits to win both prizes.

Random fact

This game is occasionally played for cars. Here's an example of one such playing:

Win-loss record

Actual (seasons 29-47): 70-85 (45.16%)
What it would be by random chance: 1/4 (25%)

How often each combination was correct (seasons 40-47)

All 3 numbers on top were right: 2 playings (2.99%) [none since season 42]
2 numbers on top and 1 on the bottom were right: 33 playings (49.25%)
1 number on top and 2 on the bottom were right: 32 playings (47.76%)
All 3 numbers on the bottom were right: 0 playings (0%)

Strategy

If a 0 is an option for the last digit, choose the second digit for free. The last digit has been 0 in every playing of this game except one since season 44, and in that playing, 0 wasn't an option for the last digit. So if 0 is a choice for the last digit, that is NOT the one you want to choose for free. Choose the second digit for free, choose 0 for the last digit, and then you only have to know the hundreds digit of the prize. Regarding the hundreds digit, no prize in this game has been worth less than $500 since season 41, so if you see a choice that's less than 5 for the first digit, it's wrong.

That one playing where 0 wasn't a choice for the last digit was the very last playing of season 47, where the choices were 2 and 5. The 2 was correct. While I hope that was a one-time aberration, my advice is that if 0 is not a choice for the last digit, then you should choose the last digit for free instead of the second digit.

Finally, make sure that your final price has at least one digit from the top and one from the bottom.

Monday, September 23, 2019

The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Triple Play

Triple Play

Rules

Three cars are shown. For the first car, two prices are shown; the contestant must choose which price is closest to the actual retail price of the car without going over. If they are correct, they move on to the second car. That car has three prices; the contestant must again choose the price that is the closest to the price of the car without going over. If they are correct, they go to the last car, where they have four choices and must choose the one that is closest to the car's actual retail price without going over. If they are correct, they win all three cars; if they are wrong at any time, they win nothing.

Random fact

Triple Play is the only game on the show that has prizes that aren't always described by George. This is because the car is only described by George just before the contestant gives their guess; if the contestant doesn't reach the second or third car, its/their description/s is/are not read.

Win-loss record

Actual (seasons 29-47): 13-74 (14.94%)
What it would be by random chance: 1/24 (4.17%)

The correct price to choose was...(seasons 40-47)

First car

The cheaper price: 7 playings (22.58%)
The more expensive price: 24 playings (77.42%)

Second car*

The cheapest price: 6 playings (31.58%)
The middle price: 10 playings (52.63%)
The most expensive price: 3 playings (15.79%)

Third car*

The cheapest price: 7 playings (70%)
The second cheapest price: 0 playings (0%)
The second most expensive price: 3 playings (30%)
The most expensive price: 0 playings (0%)

* Only counts playings the contestant reached that car.

Strategy

First car

Select the more expensive price unless you're absolutely sure the cheaper price is correct; the cheaper price hasn't been correct more than once in a season since season 40, and in seasons 44, 45, and 47, the cheaper price was never right.

Second and third cars

Know the prices. The middle price has been the most likely to be correct for the second car, but that's not enough data to be able to confidently say you should pick it. Ditto for the third car--yes, the cheapest price has been correct 70% of the time, but the sample size is far too small to confidently say that's really a pattern and not just a coincidence.