The following post originally appeared on our RoadLoans blog, The Open Road.
With tens of millions of us buying used or new cars, trucks, crossovers or SUVs each year, of course, car loans also are in great demand.
“Almost three out of four cars purchased today require financing to complete the transaction,” according to CarQuotes.com. “There are steps you can take to help yourself.”
“It’s easy to spend $25,000 or more on an automobile, making it the second largest purchase for many folks, second only to the house with the garage where you’ll be parking the car,” Clint Williams recently wrote at ajc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “And while frugal personal finance gurus … preach paying cash for cars, most people will finance the purchase of new wheels.
“That makes shopping for the auto loan almost important as shopping for the auto.”
“In a perfect world, we would all pay cash for our cars and never have to worry about debt or monthly payments,” writes Ronald Montoya, consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com, wrote about car loans. “We would likely negotiate the sale price more aggressively with the salesman, because he would know that we had the money and could take our business elsewhere at a moment’s notice.
“In the real world, however, only a small percentage of people are able to save up enough cash to pay for a car in full. The rest of us have to finance.”
But how do consumers make the best deal possible on their car loans?
That’s the question we answer in our infographic “7 Steps to Your Next Car, Truck, or SUV loan.” Those seven steps range from reviewing your credit to getting approved for financing before going to a dealership to remembering that any final decision on financing is yours.
