Money Matters
By Robin Walton, CPA
Inside secrets about buying your next new truck
Whether it’s in the coming year or further down the road, you will likely be looking at purchasing a new vehicle at some point in the future.
Since most of us don’t have the extra cash lying around to buy a vehicle out right, financing becomes the biggest question after deciding which vehicle you want to purchase.
Before you start actually shopping around for financing for your truck, it’s a good idea to do a little research and get prepared.
Do some web searches and get an idea of what interest rates you can expect. Then drop some numbers into an auto financing calculator to see what that is going to translate to for monthly payments.
One of the free on-line auto financing calculators that I like is at www.bankrate.com (just look under the Auto tab).
This calculator has the option to drop in three different interest rates so you can compare what that does to your monthly payments and what it means as far as total interest you will pay over the life of the loan.
This gives you a chance to sit back, without the pressure of the financing manager at the dealer, and evaluate interest rates, terms and monthly payments before you have added the complication of deciding on a specific truck that you’ve just test driven. READ MORE
