So... I'm looking to buy a new car, whether it is actually new, or just new to me. Anybody know anyone in the biz, as it were, or just know good cars to look into? Or know a good place to receive financing from
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As I understand it, buying a new car is generally a pretty retarded idea because it's so much cheaper to buy used. I bought cash, so I don't know anything about any damn interest rates.
I've heard that too. But I'm no longer convinced that is necessarily the case. The thing about complicated pieces of machinery like cars is that they have lots of pieces that are all prone to failure. All of those pieces have a chance to fail that's an increasing (over most areas of the domain) function of time and miles driven. Multiply together all of the fail probabilities of all of the parts and you have a chance of any single point failure that's geometrically increasing.
What this means is that the first miles on a car are the most valuable ones, from the perspective of Total Cost of Ownership. So that used car may not necessarily be such a bargain once you factor in the cost needed to keep the thing on the road over the lifetime of the purchase.
Of course, to be sure about this I'd have to do the math with something close to the real numbers. I am not inclined to do this. So for now I guess this is just something to think about.
Nick's on to something here. I just dropped $300 on a new alternator this weekend. Also, be sure to factor the warranty you'll get with a new car. So what little maintenance you;d have to do those first few years should be free. A good compromise may be to buy a used car that's only a couple of years old. A car drops a lot of it's "value" right away, meaning you can buy it much cheaper than used, but if you get a car that's only a year or two old, it will likely still be under warranty and be in the cheap TCO area.
I wasn't saying buy any old shitty junker. Obviously you want to check the vehicle history and stuff, but a lot of those Japanese cars will run forever, and yeah, if you just buy them a year or two old, I've read that that's a huge increase in value, as in you pay a lot less for almost the same product.
My BECU auto loan is at 6.25%. Of course, I got it a couple of years ago when rates were lower and my Dad cosigned, so his credit probably helped my no-credit get a lower rate. It would probably be useful to decide how much car you want, then try to get pre-approved for that ammount (+10% or so wiggle and taxes) from your bank (are you WaMu or BECU, I forget?). Then you at least have a baseline, and don't have to accept crappy loans from dealers.
My experience was kind of interesting, though. We got preapproved on my car, but the dealer actually got me a lower rate through BECU than BECU had originally offered. I'm not sure what the deal with that was.
Also, if you don't like the dealer, don't buy a car from them. It's not like there's a shortage of cars out there.
Driving Irate to his Grandparents' house I learned that his Grandpa used to be a used car salesman, and a good one. Maybe you should try to contact Irate and see if he has any suggestions.
When I was with my Grandpa, we just went around to a bunch of different lots to see what kinds of car I would fit in. I basically just went and sat in every car I was interested in, and then left
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I joined WSECU and my Mom cosigned for me. They estimated my rate at 5.2%. I think that in-house financing is usually significantly higher.
Another thing to consider is that many places will pre-approve you for a specific amount. You may want to go into your bank (CU, whatever) and find out how much they will loan you and what your payments might be before you start looking at cars.
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I've heard that too. But I'm no longer convinced that is necessarily the case. The thing about complicated pieces of machinery like cars is that they have lots of pieces that are all prone to failure. All of those pieces have a chance to fail that's an increasing (over most areas of the domain) function of time and miles driven. Multiply together all of the fail probabilities of all of the parts and you have a chance of any single point failure that's geometrically increasing.
What this means is that the first miles on a car are the most valuable ones, from the perspective of Total Cost of Ownership. So that used car may not necessarily be such a bargain once you factor in the cost needed to keep the thing on the road over the lifetime of the purchase.
Of course, to be sure about this I'd have to do the math with something close to the real numbers. I am not inclined to do this. So for now I guess this is just something to think about.
-Nick
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My experience was kind of interesting, though. We got preapproved on my car, but the dealer actually got me a lower rate through BECU than BECU had originally offered. I'm not sure what the deal with that was.
Also, if you don't like the dealer, don't buy a car from them. It's not like there's a shortage of cars out there.
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Another thing to consider is that many places will pre-approve you for a specific amount. You may want to go into your bank (CU, whatever) and find out how much they will loan you and what your payments might be before you start looking at cars.
-Irate
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