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Car loans, and insurance (two different topics)
Lankysean
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First topic:
I'm looking at buying a new car, I'm bored with my current car and I think it's time for a change. Anyway, I have about 10 grand in spendable cash meaning I'm going to have to finance roughly half the price of the car. I know a lot of dealerships have in house financing but I've heard that you can get better interest rates from private loan companies. I have awesome credit (north of 790) so I figure I should get a good rate. Anyone know a good place to look? My personal banks rate wasn't amazing, 5.59% with monthly payments of about $290.
Second topic:
Like I said before, I have a car and I'm getting a new one so my current car has got to go. I'm thinking about giving the car to my Fiancée who will be moving back to the states from Vet school in a few months. She doesn't have a car in America and will be needing one for her clinical year of school, which won't be in her home state of New York. The only reason I tell you that is because she'll only be in NY for about a month after she gets home and then she'll be in another state (probably Illinois) for the next year. I'm a little befuddled as to what she's going to need to do with insurance... will she need to get NY insurance or Illinois insurance... or both?
I'm looking at buying a new car, I'm bored with my current car and I think it's time for a change. Anyway, I have about 10 grand in spendable cash meaning I'm going to have to finance roughly half the price of the car. I know a lot of dealerships have in house financing but I've heard that you can get better interest rates from private loan companies. I have awesome credit (north of 790) so I figure I should get a good rate. Anyone know a good place to look? My personal banks rate wasn't amazing, 5.59% with monthly payments of about $290.
Second topic:
Like I said before, I have a car and I'm getting a new one so my current car has got to go. I'm thinking about giving the car to my Fiancée who will be moving back to the states from Vet school in a few months. She doesn't have a car in America and will be needing one for her clinical year of school, which won't be in her home state of New York. The only reason I tell you that is because she'll only be in NY for about a month after she gets home and then she'll be in another state (probably Illinois) for the next year. I'm a little befuddled as to what she's going to need to do with insurance... will she need to get NY insurance or Illinois insurance... or both?
Lankysean on
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W/r/t insurance (and IANAIP), the particulars depend on her place of residency and the company she uses.
As for insurance, you insure the car in the state where it is registered.
The best Honda can offer right now is 2.9%... still better then my bank will give me.
Where would she register the car? I assume insurance in Illinois insurance is going to be a ton cheaper then NY so it might be worth it to register it there right?
Whoever owns the car will likely register it where they have a legal residence. It can be more complicated than that but doesn't have to be. This is the registration with a state, it is where you get your license plates from and it decides where you insure it. I know in NY you have to have proof of insurance to register a vehicle at all.
Now even if you live in NY and you have the car registered in NY if it is going to be driven the vast majority of the time somewhere else you have to tell your insurance company about this. It isn't a super unusual thing, what with students and college and all, but it will impact your rates. I would just be clear and upfront about it with your insurance rep.
This all assumes you retain ownership of the car. If you give/sell/whatever it to her she will need to register it and insure it (you guys also need to record the gift/sale and pay tax on it). I would probably still look at using that month to get it all sorted (and thus in NY) but that isn't quite so clear.
As for financing, dealer financing is fine just be careful with it and be real clear on what you are actually going to end up paying. They will try and "four box" you. Unless you are very familiar with the math behind it (and compared to them, you won't be) it can lead to distorting your understanding of what you are agreeing to. You seem to have a firm grasp on this from the OP but I'm just restating it.
She's going to take possession of the car, and it will be driven almost exclusively in Illinois other then the week or two she'll be in NY and the 2 days it'll take to drive to Illinois.... Once she gets to Illinois the car will remain there until she returns back to NY about a year and a month later. I was thinking she would register and insure it in NY, drive to Illinois and re-register it there and cancel her NY insurance and start up with some (hopefully much cheaper) Illinois insurance... I guess that's not how it works unless she was staying their for a very extended amount of time.
As for the financing, I've been trying to learn some car dealer tricks to avoid getting the shaft. So far I'm working on getting as much info upfront from the dealers before I even get down to the dealership. The only info I can't get from them upfront is interest rate so I went over their head and got pre approved direct from Honda Financial. I've never heard of this "four box" method, what's that all about?
Good luck. Generally they won't give much info in an effort of actually getting you into the dealership. That's how they usually work.
And usually they will ask how much you want your monthly payment to be. Tell them you want to work out the actual price of the car before deciding that. The reason they do this is if you say you want to pay $300.00 a month, they'll sell you the car for MSRP and just stretch the loan out however many months they have to, to make your payments $300.00. Definitely check out carbuyingtips.com. I read that site inside and out for a month before walking into a new car dealership.
Remember that if it doesn't feel right, or you're uncertain of anything, just walk away and collect yourself. Some salesmen will come on pretty hard, and others will be fairly laid back.
You're going a bit beyond me really. A couple things: Possession and ownership are different. Unless you sell/gift it to her she won't be able to register it at all and I'm uncertain she could insure it. Remember, people do not get automotive insurance, vehicles do. You could register and insure it, in which case where (for each) would be based on your residence. You obviously should tell your insurance company that somebody else is the primary driver and are driving it in another state. Given this is a typical college situation I wouldn't expect them to really bat an eye.
If she does own and register the vehicle it appears that both NY and IL have 30 days windows from after she is resident to register the car.
They will take a piece of paper and work it out like this:
Now with an annoying amount of math each of these impact what your total cost is but they do it in a way that is not very easy to evaluate quickly or intuitively.
"Can you pay 10 dollars more a month?" or "Could you make an extra payment?" or whatever. The big thing is they do this every single day and you likely do it once every couple years, at best. They are just way more practiced than you are.
Since you are just choosing to upgrade be very willing to just walk the fuck out of a dealer if you feel the least bit uncomfortable. If they start giving you pressure sells or whatever just leave. Find a dealer for the car you like that does heavy online sales if you can.
Edmund's true price stuff so you can know what the cars sell for around your area. I found their forums a gold mine for specific model information that people volunteered.
With your credit score and the fact you are buying a car because it would be nice you have all the power in the dynamic. Do not be afraid to act like it.
Totally missed this. You should qualify for 0% financing if you can find a dealership running it. My credit score was 745 when Mazda approved me for 0% on my wife's car. And that was with another car loan already on my plate and only 6 years of credit history. It feels REALLY good every month to see that none of your car payment is going towards interest.
Where you register and insure it really doesn't matter, as long as you have all the proper stickers and things for whatever area it's registered at.
Illinois has a $100 licence plate sticker (state registration) required for all IL cars, due every year. Chicago has a window sticker, and most cities have a required sticker as well, $25+ yearly too. Also need to do emissions testing depending on age, etc., though that's 'free'.
So say she was registered in IL, and driving in NY or any other state. Cop may/probably knows about the licence sticker and may ticket for that, but will not know about the city sticker.
Insurance depends on driving history, type/year or car, and safety features. Area where car is may factor in somewhat, but if both major cities, probably not that much different.
This....isn't remotely correct. Different states have different insurance laws. New York has Personal Injury Protection coverage, Illinois does not. If all you care about is getting a piece of paper in case for tags / traffic stop purposes, then it probably won't matter - but if you're in an accident and you don't have the correct coverages, there's going to be a problem.
Bottom line - if she's going to be in Illinois for more than 30 days, she needs to have Illinois auto insurance / tags / plates (bonus - since Illinois does not have PIP, she'll probably pay significantly less on a monthly basis, since the insurance company won't be on the hook for unlimited lifetime medical payments due to injuries sustained in an auto accident).
Good stuff, is that the general rule, if you are in a state for more then 30 days you need to have the right tags for that state?
As for me buying a car, I found a dealership near me that gets very good reviews and has be recommended to me by a few people on the forums of the car I want... so I'm gonna email them tonight for a price quote and see what happens.
You can negotiate with the dealership when it comes to just about anything. They want to make the sale and they want to make as much money as possible on the sale, but there is lots of built in profit that they try to tell you they don't have.
Basically, don't talk financing right away. Try to keep the conversation in final purchase price (Including freight, tax, environment levy, whatever) and get them to come down. They will, especially if you walk away from the sale and come back to the same salesperson another day. Always be prepared to walk away. They want you to drive their car. You just want a good car and there's lots of options for getting that. You have the advantage.
Once you settle on a price, then discuss payment. Demand 0.9% or better because, really, financing is just them making sure their customers buy their cars. The money is made on the sale, not the interest on financing.
When it comes down to it, any dealer can knock a few grand off the car and offer cheap financing, but they will tell you that they can't because, well, they don't want to knock a few grand off and they want to offer expensive financing, but you don't want to get hosed.
If one dealership won't make the deal you want, go to someone else. Always remember that there is a better car for less somewhere, so make them earn the sale.