I always borrowed money from family when I wanted to buy a used car. Lower intrest rate (yes, my folks charged all of the kids a low rate of interest).
But Dad is helping my unemployed brother, who is in danger of losing his home.
So, I need a loan.
I am a member of a regional credit union, worked in the same place for just shy of 15 years, have savings, a CD, and a checking account. Ihave had a credit card for around 13 years now, & have never been late with a payment. A couple of years ago, I checked my credit rating , & it was pretty good.
I have no outstanding debts, beyond the credit card, which I pay off in full every month. I run no balance.
But I have never had a bank loan.
And I have no co-signers. Nobody.
[ol]
[li]What is the best approach to get a loan?[/li][li]Should I try to get the loan first, or try to locate the car?[/li][li]Any good advice, generally?[/li][/ol]
I ask this out of a lack of experience, & respect for my fellow Dopers.
In your situation, I think your credit union will be happy to approve a loan. You can likely apply over the phone or have the application faxed to your office. If it was me, I’d prefer to be pre-approved, if the lender does that, so I know how much I can spend before I start looking.
Didn’t we go through this already like two or three years ago?
I gave this advice in the first thread, I am going to try this one more time. Bosda–Log into eloan.com and enter your information. You should have an answer in minutes. Online. No face to face interaction, really.
Call your credit union. Tell them that you are a member, and you want to apply for a car loan. You can do this before you’ve gone car shopping. Do not volunteer any information about your past with the loan officer - they will ask questions, you should answer them. Remember they want to loan you money - that’s how they’re able to pay the interest on deposit accounts. Don’t worry about your past credit, your lack of loans, etc. There’s no reason you should need a cosigner, unless your current income, debt, assets, etc. don’t allow you to borrow the amount you want, in which case you should borrow a smaller amount.
Based on the previous thread - don’t even tell your father you’re doing this. There’s nothing he can do to help you.
You don’t even need to pick up the phone. Go to the website for your credit union, look on the menu bar for “Products / Auto Loans”, fill in the online form and click submit.
P.S. Post back to this thread telling us which method you tried and what was the result.
P.P.S. Get a pre-approved loan amount from your credit union. Once you have that information, decide how much you want to spend on a car, and only then go car shopping. If the credit union pre-approves you for, say, 30000 dollars, that doesn’t mean you have to spend all of the 30000 dollars.
A word of advice: check with your credit union concerning auto-find. Some of them will take your specifications and go look for a car meeting them and use their purchasing power to get a better price. If your credit union does it you’re removed from all them back and forth hassle of looking for a car. I use it and it’s a godsend.
Bosda,
I think your best bet is to walk into a car dealership, pick the car you want, and tell them you want to finance it. They’ll expect a couple thousand dollars down and you finance the rest. They’ll ask for 20% down, but they’ll take less if you don’t have the cash. A rough estimate of monthly payment is approximately $200 per month payment per $10,000 financed. So, as an example, you pick a new car costing $22,000, put $2,000 cash down and finance the rest at $400/month (at 7% interest for 60 months). Simple.
Going out ahead of time to arrange financing on your own is sort of a complicated affair. You sound like you’re not really big on complicated affairs, so take my advise and keep the deal simple. A new car dealership is dedicated to the mission of making it very, very easy for you to buy a car, so let them do their job.
If you really want to use your credit union, just tell the people at the dealership you can get a decent rate there, and that you want to use them. The dealership will usually match/beat the rate through their own lenders in a case like this. They might even arrange the financign through the CU for you.
Buying a car is simple. No need to make it complicated.
Good luck.
Winston
ETA: Never having had a ‘bank loan’ is irrelavent, since you have credit cards. You’ve checked your credit and it’s good - that’s all that matters to the finance companies - you shouldn’t need a cosigner, either.
Got the loan.
10 minutes, tops.
Best possible rate.
BTW–Credit was 790.
Way to go, Bos! What kind of car are you gonna get?
Congrats. Wasn’t that easy? Now wait till you have to start negotiating prices with car salesmen…
When I was at my local Honda dealer on Saturday to get my car serviced, I noticed how empty the new car lot was. According to the service rep, they sold a lot of cars through the Cash for Clunkers program. So if you’re in the market for a new car, you may find your choices limited for a while, although there may be deals in low-mileage used cars out there, since they didn’t qualify for the Cash for Clunkers deals.
I bought a used car.
60,000 miles/$6,800 after trade-in of a 10 year old wreck/ 4.75% rate on loan/ Aveo.
Good for you, Bosda. I’m sure it will serve you well.
Happy motoring!