Car Payments: How Low Can You Go?

Seriously ladies, I just refinanced my car for a wayyy lower interest rate. If you’re like me, you bought your first car when you were younger. And maybe had a tough time getting approved. The worst thing about this whole “credit” deal is that if you don’t have much, you’re almost guaranteed to get a ridiculous rate. Nobody wants to finance someone with little to no credit. If you’re lucky, you might’ve managed to get someone to cosign on a vehicle for you. But I was determined to do this on my own. So I walked into a dealership with no idea what to expect.

After a lot of hassling and going back and forth, I walked out of there with a used car financed in my name at a 3.75% interest rate. Not bad, right? I have friends and family members who are older than me and have rates that are double that! Yuck. But wait, the good news doesn’t end there. I had let the dealership pick who financed me. It was some auto financing company that’s supposed to be really great. I won’t name them because that’s just mean.

But anyway, I’d been making these payments monthly for a few years when I heard about this financial institution called a credit union. I’m being totally serious when I say I had no idea what the heck it was. But my parents had mentioned that credit unions always offer lower rates because they are non-profit. So me, being the frugal nut that I am, I’m like “Well, I’ve gotta check this out. See if I’m missing out on anything here.”

So in I go to Fort Worth Community Credit Union. Because I read online that you just have to live in Tarrant, Johnson, Parker or Denton county to be a member. I get to talking to this lady in lending and she’s like “Well, you’ve got a pretty good deal here already.” I’m all proud because I’m super young and I managed a 3.75% interest rate on my car loan. And then she looks at me like “With what you owe and your credit score… We can refinance it at 2.55%”

Hmm. On one hand, I’m like “Nice, let’s switch it over!” and on the other I’m like “Ugh, do I really wanna fill out all this extra paperwork again? It’s only 1.2% difference.” So I did the math. And over the rest of the car loan, I’d be paying roughly $400 less. $400 doesn’t seem like much in comparison to a $15,000 car loan. But remember, you guys. $400 is a shopping spree. It’s a new iPhone or several pairs of nice shoes. I’ll take it. So I said yes. Let’s do it. I could go for the new iPhone.