Buying a car has for too long been synonymous with a headache. High pressure sales man, pushy finance people and long hours at the dealership is what people are used to. Unless you have the cash on hand to buy the car outright, a person is going to have to either lease or finance the automobile. The purpose of this article is to show people a few tips they can follow that will insure a quick and painless experience when buying a car.
STEP 1: Need Vs Want!
Before any other step, one has to get themselves out of the want mind frame our consumer society puts us in. We need to put our sensible hat on and go at car purchase with a need mind frame. Just ask yourself a few simple questions. Why am I buying a car? Who is going to be riding in the car? What are the things that I hate about my car? What are some of the things that I like about my car? By asking yourself these questions you are putting together a mental picture of the car you are looking for. Even before you decided what manufacturer to go with, you need to have a mental picture of what are the things you are going to need out of your new car. Trust me, by doing this you will save your self a ton of money by getting the car you need and not the car you want.
STEP 2: The True Price
At this stage in the game, a person will have an idea of what kind of car they are looking for. Using the questions above, Our friend Joe the car buyer has decided he needs a new sedan for his family. He needs something with a sunroof and ac. At the same time, he likes the gas mileage he gets with his current car and wants to keep it the same. Now, ask yourself how much money you want to pay for the car a month. You need to be realistic with yourself about this. If you have really good credit, the only thing that it does for you is increase the chance you have of getting approved for a loan with not a lot of money down. But either way, money down is very important. You see when you go and buy a car, the price on the window is the price of the car plus the profit the dealership is going to make. If the dealership has a car with a window sticker of twenty thousand and they paid eighteen thousand, the car has two thousand dollars that you and the dealership are going to use in your negotiations. The trick is that this is the dealers money and he isn’t going to want to give it up. Don t let them fool you, there is more money there, but well touch on that later. Know this, for every thousand that is financed, its going to equal twenty dollars a month give or take. Because financing is based on a person to person basis please only use this as an estimate tool. The car is also going to have tax and dealer fees, which will usually come out to about eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars on top of the price. Very quickly your eighteen thousand dollar car is now twenty thousand. So if you going to buy a car, you best tip is get two thousand dollars of your own money. Two thousand is a very say and universal number for all makes and models. This money is going to give you an upper hand that you will definitely want to have. By not putting the dealer fees into your loan, you have already lowered you monthly payments. The two thousand you came up with before going to the dealership is going to come out to ruffly forty dollars a month.
STEP 3: Find your car
With the internet finding the car you want has never been easier. If you followed my first two steps, you should know what kind of car you need and how much you are willing to pay per month. Go online and look at the different cars that are out there. Check the manufacturer’s websites and see what cars you like. Once you have found the car that you want, its time to go to the dealership. Before you do this, you can save yourself and the dealerships lots of time by doing a simple thing. Call them. I know it sounds crazy, but really just call the dealership. Tell them the make of the car you are interested in and ask them for a price quote. This quote is not set in stone. Please remember that. Make sure you notate who you spoke with and what price you were quoted. Don’t be afraid of the sales person. If you get his name and info, you will know exactly who to talk to when you go to the dealership. By building this rapport, the sales person is going to do all he can to make sure you get the car you want at the price you want within reason.
So you have your quotes organized by lowest to highest. All you really need is three quotes from three different dealerships to give you an idea of what price you can expect the dealerships to start negotiating at. Just pick the lowest and visit them. You are going to waste you time driving around to all the dealerships in your town trying to get the best price. You are better off calling, going with the lowest quote, and negotiating your way down. The dealership will be more likely to lower their price if they know you only went to them. The line, Ill go somewhere else is only going to hurt you.
STEP 4: The Dealership
The moment of truth. You have two thousand cash, a price quote, a sales person who knows who you are, a car you want, and you know what price it needs to be at so you can get the monthly payment you want. All this you never even left your house. Now its time for the dealership. Always go to the dealership in two visits, let me repeat this. Always go to the dealership in two visits. You want to test drive the car at the beginning of the month. The top of the month dealerships are not as desperate to sell cars so they are going to be able to take there time with you in getting to know the car. Also, its best to go early in the morning because there are going to be less people there so you know your sales person will be free. I suggest 9- 10 am. Like I mentioned before you want to separate you want to buy your car in to visits. By doing this you are baiting the dealership. They are going to try to sell you as hard as possible on that first visit. DO NOT BUY. No matter what, just kindly excuse yourself. Tell them you need time to think about it and go. Trust me, this is going to pay off at the end of the month. With this rapport built up they are going to want to practically give you the car at the end of the month when the dealership is trying to meet quotas.
STEP 5: Negotiating
When you go back at the end of the month, your goal is one thing and one thing alone. You goal is to work the dealership and negotiate until you get the price you want. Would you sell your house for less then market value. Of course you wouldn’t, so don’t expect the dealership to sell you there car for less than cost. Now that is not always the case. Remember how I stated that sometimes there is more money in the car than the profit. Before you make your end of the month visit, go to Edmunds.com and check to see the monthly specials on your car if there are any. Let me explain, sometimes manufactures will give dealers money for selling a car, even if they sell it under cost. This is not on every car or every model so don’t expect it, just research and see if its available. If it is what this means is that you can buy the car at cost or a little below it. The easiest price to negotiate down to is 500 over the bottom line, if you are good at negotiating, you might even get it down to 200 over bottom line. Remember, bottom line is either cost or below cost if there is extra money. The key to getting to lowest price is to go on the last day of the month. The dealer is trying to sell as many cars as they can and will practically bend over backwards to sell you. Now you have the upper hand. Don t ever expect to get the bottom line. You can try but the dealership is not a charity. The sooner you accept this, the less of a headache you are going to have.
STEP 6: Driving Home
You might think im crazy and this is not possible. But I assure you, by following these simple steps you will get the car you want at the price you can afford with no hassle at all.
