President Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged that his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States, saying American kids might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” but he insisted China will suffer more from his trade war.
Go to credit unions around you and apply for a loan yourself. You shouldn’t ever rely on dealerships to find financing for you. Interest rates are awful right now but with your commute you need something reliable and fuel efficient (like a Camry or Corolla).
Yeah, I was hoping to finance a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek with 70k miles on it. Out the door was ~18. They shot that down pretty quick. I’ll figure out something, didn’t see any decent shape Toyotas around, small town
It’s definitely worth driving an hour or two to a bigger city to buy a car there. What I’ve done with the last several vehicles I’ve bought was to stake out TrueCar.com, find the models I’m interested in, and then watch them over a month or two to see what is and isn’t a good selling price (crossreferenced with info from KBB.com).
Once I’ve found one that seems like a good deal, I then applied for loans online with local CU’s after comparing their rates. Once approved, I headed to the dealership to buy the car, though if you’re driving a great distance you may call ahead to make sure they have it. It might also be worthwhile to find 2 or 3 other vehicles that are good deals so that you have a backup if the first doesn’t pan out.
Nissans get a bad rap, but I haven’t been able to kill the three I’ve owned despite neglecting their maintenance.
No passenger car Nissan should be touched, their CVT’s have been and continue to be unreliable dogshit.
I once bought a 1990 Nissan Sentra for $700 in 2013, then sold it ten months later for $700. I had to pay for gasoline and oil, but that’s it. It was a totally functional car, it was just absolutely tiny and didn’t have airbags, so I didn’t really want to keep driving it.
Was it a manual 4 speed?
I think it was a three speed automatic, lol. It felt like it weighed about 250 kg, but it was actually pretty manageable in the snow because it was so easy to get back in control once you’d lost it.
Presently rocking a Versa here with 215k miles right now and it doesn’t want to quit. It just keeps going.
(Not a CVT though, not sure if that’s the difference)
It’s a huge difference
The last time I was looking (~6 years ago), banks were unwilling to offer and very judgmental about my request for a loan on a used car. They said loans were for new cars and the bank isn’t a replacement for a little financial know-how. I only went to two banks and one credit union, because I got tired of being condescended to, but the dealership said that they hadn’t heard of used car loans from a bank before (could be a lie).
That was absolutely a lie from the dealership. You can apply online at most places now to save yourself some time. Many places even list their loan rates broken down by the type of loan (48 month new car, 60 month new car, 60 month used car, etc) so that you can compare rates without even filling out a loan application.
You might also check your credit score with Credit Karma, or your credit card company, or bank to see where you sit (these will be Vantage scores but should be close to the FICO scores used when applying for a loan) just for some more insight.
Shop around to see who has the lowest rates and then start applying. Once approved you can then walk into the dealership to actually buy a car and even used your pre-approved loan to negotiate a better rate with the dealer since they get kickbacks from banks. Also be sure to never negotiate based on the monthly payment, just the total price of the car because they can really screw you with interest rates and term lengths to make your monthly payment seem low while you end up spending more overall when negotiating based on monthly payment alone.
I absolutely have used a credit union loan to finance a used car. They had rules…less than ten years, 85000 miles or something, but definitely did the loan. At the time anything under 7000 was considered a personal loan and had a higher interest rate.
Good luck.
Yeah, it’s very possible that I just hit bad luck with the banks and the dealership lied, or maybe it’s location dependent 🤷