I got 5.59% for 60 months from my dealer through Harris Bank in Illinois. I never heard of them since I am in Michigan, but it is a nice rate.

 

TFS gave me 7.09% for 5yr which was much lower than anything I was offered thru Costco/LendingTree. Buying a house in CA really screws up your credit rating!!!

 

5.0% for 2 years at Alliant Credit Union. Currently the rate is 4.75%. (I wonder if they will let me refinance it at the lower rate.)

 

I doubt it. They probably have different rates for new vs. used cars. If they do they may make you refinance at the used car rate. However, some credit unions will allow you to finance a used car less than 1 year old at the new car rate. However, the difference in payment on a $10,000 loan would be $1.12 per month, so I doubt you'd bother.

 

I just want to say that what the dealer gives you likely is not the lowest rate you can get. I found this out when I was financed for my TCH at the dealer. I had not signed a certain initial on the form, and they fedex'ed me the paperwork which included a sheet that had the rate at which the bank was buying the loan from the dealer at, 0.5% lower than what my rate was. They also overcharged for gap insurance. At this point I called my credit union and they were able to match the lower rate and offer gap insurance for $160 instead of $600. That 0.5% interest over 84 months was a lot of profit for the dealer, on top of the $440 for gap insurance. I changed everything over and took that profit away from the sleazy dealer.

What does this tell you? Shop around for the lowest rate on your own. You may want to let the dealer think you're financing with him, so he may discount the car more for you thinking he'll make it up in financing. This is what happened to me. I got $800 off MSRP and $2000 on a trade which booked for maybe $1200. While he still made money off of me, he didn't make a killing.

 

5.74% from our credit union...they were running a special and we got in with 2 days left.

 

I see, it's probably not worth the time it would take (and the current used rate is 5.15% if they did it that way). I'm paying the 5.0% loan out of a money market account currently earning 4.96% so it's really a .04% loan anyway. Thanks for the advice.

 

Here are a few ways to get a good rate on your car loan:

Visit www.creditunion.coop and look for local credit unions you can join. Their rates can vary widely so check out a few. Pentagon Federal Credit Union for example (which anyone can join by paying a $25 fee to join an association they are affiliated with) offers 5.74% car loans for up to 72 months.

If you want to *really* go low and you have really good credit, instead visit creditcards.com and look for low balance transfer rates. Example, if you have a small business, Advanta has a 2.99% rate on balance transfers until the card is paid off. So you get the card, put the car loan on it, and don't charge anything else on that card. The only downside to using a credit card is that you'll pay a higher monthly payment initially, and then it will decline over time. The upside is that your car loan becomes an unsecured loan. So you can make insurance changes, etc. without worrying about the lienholder.

Donald