I’m refinancing this terrible loan and the bank person grimaced when they saw this.
I took a loan out on a brand new car many years ago, a 6 year term with 17% interest (don’t do that, kids). But I was able to refinance to ~4% a year later, we knocked another year off the remaining term (5 years to 4 years), and I still ended up paying less per month than the original payment.
I miss that car sometimes. It was a 2012 Kia Soul, and I really liked it. I went on a 3-week business trip a few years ago, and my rental happened to be a 2021 Kia Soul in mustard yellow. I loved every minute of it.
I have a loan right now that is at like 3%. I can pay it off now if I wanted to, but it’s so low that I can easily make more money by putting it away and collect interest on it. It would be kinda nice to get a new car, but where this country is headed, it’s not worth it. I feel bad for the younger generations and what lies ahead for them.
I’ve got four paid-off vehicles (2 cars, 2 motorcycles), and am about to acquire another car (W123 diesel Benz) from my wife’s grandmother who is no longer able to drive.
I don’t care to have any more car payments, and I hope it stays that way for a long time.
Loans with interest rates above inflation are weapons. They are violence. Why should we all have to pay more than something is worth for our education, our transportation, our housing? Why are we paying directly for these things at all?
Government should be providing all this for its people. Higher education should be provided. Starter housing should be provided. Public transportation should be provided.
considering that you likely live in the US, just wait 6 months and this loan would be below monthly inflation
Lol…that’s funny and also so depressing.
You pay for the ability to access capital you do not currently have. Nobody owes you thousands of dollars with which to but a car. If you want to buy a car with money you don’t have, then you have to give the bank something in return. That something almost always is “more money than we initially lent you, over the course of the loan period” and if you shut that down, banks just won’t give loans anymore. Suddenly poor and middle class people have lost their biggest tool for accessing capital.
Lack of public transport is a separate problem. The US has dropped the ball across the board there. Only a handful of cities have any reasonable public transport and even those systems are old and often shitty.
Education being so expensive that it needs to be financed, is a separate problem. Education is too important to leave to the free market, letting our system metastacize to this extent is the result of decades of compounding failures.
16.9% interest is predatory, but “interest above inflation” is necessary if you want banks to do anything besides hoard money.
See, that whole entire thought process just doesn’t hold me prisoner anymore like it used to.
If you want the capital to survive (buying a car is survival in most places) or to try and get ahead, you must pay more capital than you have. If the banks don’t make money this way, the poor and middle class will fail.
I don’t think this is true economical theory anymore. It’s corrupted greed that’s overtaken institutionally in every facet of life including academia. It’s like saying nuclear war is the best peace keeping practice.
No no surely making the rich richer will help, it’s done so great the last 50 years!
Well I’m hoping to live in a world where banks don’t provide loans anymore. I’m demanding a better world than this nightmare that is unregulated capitalism in the US.
I’m demanding a better world than any economic system that incentivizes and rewards screwing each other over and hurting one another in a race to get ahead.
Providing loans is a major part of a bank’s job though? Like yes it’s wrong that we need loans for necessities like transportation, education, healthcare etc, but even if all those were unnecessary banks would still need to provide loans so that people can start businesses or build houses.
A car is not a right, it’s a privilege. You have a right to walk with your own two feet. If you don’t want to - then you have to pay.
hey millenials: car dealers are not a good choice of bank. please tell your generation about credit unions: https://www.logixbanking.com/rates/vehicle-loans
Definitely shop around, but sometimes the dealership does have an actual competitive offer. Especially if you threaten to use external financing (and have the pre approval in hand), they might knock down their interest rate to save the deal, as the loan is where the money actually is.
And maybe buying something that isnt sold by a dealer…
Don’t buy cars. Ban them.
Yes, let’s ban the single most common form of transportation in the country because you’ve never had to live in an area with zero public transport.
Great line of thinking, there.
A lot of us wage slaves live in areas that are too spread out to bike, have no public transportation, and we can’t afford to move to a higher COL area that has those amenities. For example, my commute to work is typically 70ish miles, one way. There aren’t better job prospects within my niche industry that are available to me. I’m working towards moving closer to work, but I’ll be moving to a smaller town that is even less bike-able/walk-able. IMO, your position requires an amount of privilege I don’t have.
My commute is 117 miles one way :(, return to office has really fucked me. I won’t be moving anytime soon but am working on getting a job closer to home.
Check with and get pre-approval from a credit union or two near you. Go with that pre-approval for the car you want.
Rarely do the dealers find or provide a better deal. DON’T let them focus you on your monthly payment. Look at the complete picture.
As a non-American it seems wild to me that you would take out a loan for a car.
The so-called “wealth” you see in the American middle-class is mostly just debt. We have the shiniest toys and the biggest houses here, but it’s a giant gilded-cage. Most of us die in debt.
The process of dying involves lots of debt too because of our corrupt funeral and burial industry
I have a three year loan at 1.9%. Why would I cough up an additional $20k now, when I could hang on to my cash and, at the very least, leave it in an account that earns twice that (and then some) in interest?
how are you buying cars? Because I’m in Europe and they’re expensive here too.
Cars are expensive and necessary in areas without good public transit (read: basically everywhere except a couple of areas in specific cities). Most of us don’t have a year’s salary just sitting in the bank, especially when you’re young.
If you need a car to get to work, you’ll pay what you have to because the alternative is no job which means no home, no healthcare, and no food.
Where are you that cars are affordable to a point where this is an usual thing?
Buy the car you can afford. If you can’t buy it outright or make a significant down payment (20-30%), don’t take out a loan, look for a cheaper option. Those interest rates are insane, I’m amazed how anyone would accept them.
I ageree, but that’s his predatory loans work, there’s enough people out there who simply can’t afford not to have a car.
Sure. But if they can’t afford the loans they can’t afford the car, either. No one really needs a $40k new car, anyone could get by with a $2000 used beater.
Not really. This is another thing that falls neatly into Boots Theory.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
A new car, well taken care of, will support a driver for a decade or more. A used car, especially a cheap used car, will have problems you don’t know about and you can safely assume the previous owner did not properly care for it if not outright abused it, that will be true more often than it isn’t.
Unless that $2000 used beater has major issues (and most do at that price these days) and you don’t have the cash to fix them. Then you have a $2000 pile of crap and you still need a car. No, not everyone needs an expensive car, but sometimes there’s a good reason to buy something that requires payments.
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
And there are some used cars around the 2-5k€ pricepoint if you really need one i guess.
Edit: my main point was that it always shocks me to have such a car dependence in the US that you’d even have to go into debt. I am not saying Americans should just not buy cars…
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
Not really, depending on where you are.
When I was barely above broke out of college, I had to buy a shit box just to be able to go to work, because the only job I could find in my field was >20 mi from where I lived and had no public transit options that wouldn’t add an hour of walking on top of how long the bus ride took. And that’s assuming clear weather, which we get for maaaaaybe half the year. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about walking for an hour in the blistering cold with spotty sidewalks in busy areas
So, while I could take the option of not buying a car, it would turn a <30 min commute into 2-3 hours one way on a good day. Buying a car was the only way not to lose >25 hours a week on work transportation alone.
I am explicitly talking about this in the context of me being non-american. And where I live the vast majority of people who can not afford a car (like young people) are not dependent on one. Even if you live in bumfuck nowhere you can get around by moped.
If you work full time you would usually be able to afford a (cheap) car. And if your still in uni the towns are generally big enough for you to not be car-dependant.
2-5k is not something people have laying around now days.
If they do, they’re not the kind to buy them.
But I’m speaking from UK market, might be worse down here.
“American” here. We are obsessed with financing depreciable assets.
We are also obsessed with appearances and status.
I’m sure you can see from this thread some of us cannot comprehend driving a $5000 car. They will whine and come up with tons of excuses for why that just cannot happen.
I cannot comprehend owning a $5000 car.
That’s insane that some people have up to 5k to spend.
I bought my 2008 Toyota Sienna for $4500. I talked him down from $4900.
It had:
- 230k miles (269k now)
- an engine replacement (2010 engine with 110k miles, replaced at 201k on chassis)
- severely worn out sliding door rear hinges, bad enough to be grinding the body under the 3rd row windows down to bare metal
- broken power steering rack (found that a few weeks later)
- balding tires
- rattle-can patch job (black paint on factory black paint, not a deal-breaker for me)
- blown out rear shocks
- more that I’ve forgotten (noted down in my records)
I bought that van because 1) it was a really good price, 2) engine and transmission are in really good shape, 3) rust-free, and 4) I knew what most of its issues were before I bought it and was able to fix it all in my garage.
Also, I have 5 kids, so the minivan was a necessity. $5000 is the bare minimum for a family car these days.
That’s just typical brazilian interest rates
Is cash for a beater car no longer an option? I don’t want to be a “less avocado toast more bootstraps” person but a loan for a used car sounds wild to me. Maybe I’m out of touch. My vehicle is old enough to drink
Cars have been expensive for a few years now, bought an 08 Subaru in 2020, it’s worth more now than what I bought it for.
Older subarus are a high value and age well. I would expect it to hold decent value but that is crazy to be worth more 5 years later
Not often. Used cars, at least where I am, are all pretty pricey, and with rent and shit being out of control, I’m not surprised younger people can’t afford to save enough to buy one outright. I’m lucky to be older and I bought my current car at 0% interest in 2012. I’m keeping it until it gives up because I know we’ll never see that kind of deal again.
0% for a used car?
Nah mine was new but I think my ex only paid 1.9% on a used one. Interest rates were amazing.
No idea if it’s still the same nowadays, but I also bought a used car in 2013 at 0% interest. It certainly was possible then.
Its still sometimes possible. Manufacturers will periodically run 0% interest loans specials for people who qualify. Tesla (don’t actually buy one) runs the deals all the time actually.
I would strongly advise against drinking your vehicle regardless of how old it is.
Cash for clunkers removed a significant portion of the used cars from the market. It was a while ago but its effects are still very much being felt even if people don’t realize exactly what it is.
there are a lot of used ~2018 to 2022 cars on the market with not a lot of miles, most go for around $20k (like what I got). True beaters still go for like $10k.
a loan for a used car sounds wild to me.
Predatory car loans has entered the chat.
I don’t know about Carvana, but plenty of scummy dealers will give insane rates to people with no credit check, repo the car while they’re still underwater on the loan, and sell it to someone else. You can have two or three people paying off the same car.
Oh, also, they somehow encourage the most gullible people who can’t afford their loans to just let the car get reposessed instead of attempting to sell it back to the dealer.
Personally, I agree with your mindset, but I’m pretty handy with fixing/maintaining my own vehicles. For someone needing something to reliably get back and forth to work/school/daycare, I understand why people don’t go this route. Shop lead times have skyrocketed in the last few years, as have repair prices. Sometimes you just need something you don’t have to worry about.
A car that is the current model year is “used” as long as it’s had an owner. That’s what these loans are for. You can’t even get a loan for cars past seven years old with most lenders.
I mean yeah, that’s why I said beater. I just wouldn’t expect someone young or looking for a first car to be buying a current model year with low miles anyway.
I guess I was thrown when you said a loan for a used car was wild.
Carvana is a sister company of drivetime. Drivetime’s target customer base is sub-prime. Putting 2 and 2 together, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Their lowest interest rate might be 16% (for their target customer base) and goes upwards of 30%
