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Buying a car with cash?
I think some of you ladies have done this...
I am in serious need of a new car (seriously though, I panicked this morning because I realized my AAA card is sitting on the desk in our office, and not in my glovebox - it's bad)... anyways - DH and I are going to have a pretty good chunk of change to throw at a car in about 2 weeks.
We know what we want and while we could get a used version and not take out a small loan ($4,000 or less) I figure why not just get a new one, and pay off the loan in a year or so (since we have the money to do so each month.)
How much off of MSRP did you get? Did you get some extras thrown in and just paid MSRP? I feel like we should roll up in there and say we want this, this and this, and we'll pay $X in cash... but i'm not sure if that's the way to go.
Re: Buying a car with cash?
I don't know what is a MSRP is.
But we bought a used car last year from a private owner and paid $5K cash and the rest through a car loan. We got our financing from a local credit union with a good interest rate. I've heard that credit unions are the best place to get financing and to get it prior to buying a new car. Then just don't tell the salesman until the end that you already have financing. I'm not sure if this applies to you, but I hope it helps.
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The way you should do this is as follows:
-Research car boards and find out how much dealers are paying for this car in our area (Google is remarkably helpful with this)
-Be prepared to pay 3% or so of a premium for the dealer above the number you find
-Find all of the area dealers on vehix/cars.com/ whatever other site you want to use that have the exact car you want and email them with their "best out the door price for a cash buyer"
-Wait for emails to roll in (I highly suggest not giving out your phone number because I'm still being stalked re: our purchase 2 weeks ago)
-Yelp all of the dealers
-Be prepared to walk away if when you get there the out the door price is higher than you want to pay (so, don't get emotionally invested)
Stand up for something you believe in.
The one great piece of advice I learned on this Board is once you narrow down the type of car you want, register at the USAA website (if you are not already a member - you don't need to be military to use their car buying service) and use their car buying service to find out what dealers are willing to offer. I was amazed at how much less it was than what we had been "negotiating" with the dealers. They have a service for used cars too, although I have not used it. For someone who is a little bargaining phobic, me, it's great that USAA did all the bargaining and I felt really good about the price we paid, it was thousands less than MSRP. (I think we got really lucky because we were buying at the end of a model year and they were rolling out the new version of the Odyssey soon so they were looking to clear the lot, but we paid 6000 below MSRP and still got excellent financing).
The other trick I've used (pre-learning about USAA) is faxing all of the dealers a letter saying you are cost comparing and ask what their best price is on the make and model you want and then give them an email or fax where they can get back to you with their best price. We did this to buy my Prius and I thought we got a really decent price without the haggling. I learned along the way that this is a fairly common way of car buying and they even have car salesman dedicated to internet sales.
As to financing or cash - I would definitely have preferred to pay cash but that wasn't in the cards for us so we financed half the cost of our cars and paid for 50% of them up front. If you can pay cash, I think it's always better to not be in debt. Almost always you will get a better deal used than new. Although with our Odyssey purchase, new was less than a low model year used car.
We bought a late-model used car with cash a year ago. We just went to several dealerships until we found a car we liked at a reasonable price - once we narrowed down make and model. We wrote a personal check (biggest one I've ever written - our down payment for the house was a cashier's check).
Yeah... i'm not looking forward to seeing all that money go away. I might even shed a tear.
Thanks ladies - this is all really helpful!
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I had to keep telling myself we saved the money for a reason. It hurt a little worse because we HAD to buy the car as DH's car was totalled by a falling tree during a thunderstorm.
I've never had a car payment, my rule is - if I can't afford it I don't buy it, I don't finance. The only debt I've ever owed is on a house. I'm only on my 3rd car and I'm 37! See if you can pay a portion of the price with a credit card so you can get some points/miles/whatever reward your credit card has. The rest I pay with a check. For my last car I traded in my 2nd car. I donated my 1st so I didn't have anything to trade in when buying my 2nd. If I am remembering correctly, I had to pay with a cashier's check, the dealer would not take a personal check.
good luck!
We bought our Subaru with cash and I believe we ended up saving around $1500 off the MSRP...so not a gianormous amount, but not bad either (imo).
Once we decided what model we wanted, we shopped around to all the Subaru dealers in and out of the area and totally played them against each other.
By the time we were done the sales guy at the dealership we ended up buying from was all grumpy like "uh, I'm not even making any money on this now"...which I still think was utter BS. I think he just wasn't making as much money as he wanted to on it.
If you can avoid it, definitely do not finance any portion of the car. You are basically throwing away money on interest and a car is just not worth it.
We bought our last two cars with cash and pps are correct - cashier's check is the way to go. Though if you have a CC with miles that you can pay off right away, I think you can charge a certain amount ($2,500 was the max as far as I remember).
Don't tell the dealer you are paying cash - you'll need to fill out a credit app regardless. Car dealershps make a lot of money on financing so buying cash actually isn't a way to get a bargain if they know up front. So just refuse to talk about monthly payments and tell them you want to focus on the car price and getting that down.
And they'll totally try to sell you on extras (undercoat protectant, extra warranties, etc.) once they know you are paying cash. Stay strong!
that is so true! Don't mention anything about your method of payment until you have agreed on a price and are sitting down to do the paperwork.