Beware of “How much monthly payment can you afford?”

This innocent question has been misused to charge customers higher for cars.

Here is how the misuse happens.
Lets say you can afford to pay $300 a month on your new car.
Great!
1) With a car loan at 5% a year over 5 years you can afford to pay the car dealer about:$14,600 (Before taxes)
2) With a car loan at 7% a year over 5 years you can afford to pay the car dealer about: $13,900 (Before taxes) for the same car.

A) There have been cases reported where the car dealer sells the buyer a cheaper car at $13,900 and give the the buyer a higher interest loan at $300 a month. Why? Because the dealer also makes more money selling the higher interest loan to the buyer.

B) Another method that has been used is the dealer gives the buyer a big discount on the price of the car, only to set the buyer up with a higher interest loan. Note the dealer makes up for the “discount” by increasing his or her commissions on the car loan.

C) Another variation of this I have seen is when the car dealer tells the buyer, at the time of closing the deal, that they want to give something to the buyer for “free” at the same monthly payment. How do that do that? Well, they give you $1000 worth of say undercoating “free” then they drop the interest rate on your loan before you sign the papers, and use the extra loan money you can get for the same monthly payment to pay for your “free” gift.

Moral of the story. Never ever negotiate a car deal with a car dealer thinking about how much you can afford to pay each month. You need to do that calculation at home first. I even encourage you to get a pre-approved loan for a website or your bank before you talk to a dealer so you go into a dealership only ready to negotiate the other aspects of car buying.

Here is a great auto loan calculator to figure this out for yourself.