We’ve almost always bought used cars (two 2014 model years in the garage right now). We’ve made large down payments, kept the loan term short as we could afford, and gotten better rates at the Credit Union than from the dealership. We’ve kept the car salesmen at the dealership to 11:30 pm on the last day of their fiscal month. They are trying to beat their sales goal and are motivated. Then we keep our cars for 10 - 12 years. We are both retired and are wondering if we’ll need to buy another car.
We’ve made large down payments, kept the loan term short as we could afford, and gotten better rates at the Credit Union than from the dealership. We’ve kept the car salesmen at the dealership to 11:30 pm on the last day of their fiscal month.
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We have always paid cash but usually from private individuals for used cars except for the first car we bought back in 1968. I had the cash but the credit union I had my money convinced me that I needed to establish credit so I got a loan that I didn’t need. Since we are old now and don’t have any of our 9 kids around, we don’t owe anybody anything so a few years ago we bought a new car from a dealership. It was the last day of the month and we were paying cash and we got a great deal at 11pm on the last day of the month. We saved several thousand dollars from what they were trying to get from us. A few years later we did the same thing again, the last day of the month and cash. They did not want us to walk away and again we got a really good deal. We drive our cars until the wheels fall off so we don’t mind taking a hit on the loss of buying a new car. We won’t trade them in anyway.