Top Four Tips to Get the Most out of Your Car Loan

So you signed up for your car loan and bought your car. Now you can rest easy and enjoy driving around in your new wheels, safe in the knowledge that you did a good job.

But hold on, is that really what you should do? Sign up for your car loan and then forget about it until it’s paid off? Our answer is ‘No’. If you want to make your car loan as cost-effective as possible, we recommend that you keep it firmly on your radar. Here are our four simple steps to staying in the driving seat with your car loan, even after you’ve made your purchase.

1. A little more could lead to a lot less
When you set up your car loan you probably worked out exactly what you thought you could afford in terms of repayments. But most people (rightly) err on the side of caution, so there’s every chance that once you have spent some time with your new car you will discover that you have an opportunity to pay a bit more.

It’s worth considering how you’re going to spend the little bit extra you have, rather than allowing it to be absorbed elsewhere. Take a look at the benefits of putting a bit of extra cash onto your car loan - we think that you will see that it could be money well spent.

2. Keep up the good work
You’ve made all your payments on time to date, and then something happens that makes you miss a payment. Don’t worry, it’s not a disaster. Just get in touch with us as quickly as possible so we know what’s happening and we can help you resolve the situation.

It’s important to resolve your late payment as quickly as possible, rather than wait until the next payment is due. Late payment will mean that you accumulate extra interest on your account. If you don’t pay this off, it adds to your original balance and your interest costs will increase.

We would rather we helped reduce your balance rather than increase it. If you miss a payment check with our team, and we can explain how to get your loan balance back on track as quickly as possible.

3. It’s OK to cut our relationship short
Once you get a year or two into your loan, you may find that your finances or circumstances have changed, giving you more money to play with. This is a great opportunity to shorten the length of your loan by increasing your repayments, reducing the amount of interest you pay on your balance.

Contact our team, and we can help to restructure your loan to suit your new circumstances. You may choose to set a time period within which you want to get your balance cleared, or you might prefer to add an amount to each payment and see where that takes you. Proactively putting more money onto your loan is a great way to pay it off even faster.

4. It pays to keep to your agreements
We hope that if you’ve used our products and services once, you’ll be keen to use them again. As with any company, we like to look at the success of our past relationships when we set up our next agreement. That means that we’ll be extra pleased to help you again if you’ve followed the terms of your agreements and made payments on time.

It just makes sense. Of course we will be more comfortable lending money to you if you show you can follow your end of the bargain. It keeps us happy and you know we’ll make sure we do everything we can to help you next time you call.

If you’re getting ready to go car shopping and would like to talk about your car loan options, give the team at Enterprise Motor Group a call. We’ve helped thousands of Kiwis get on the road by providing them with a car loan that works within their budget.

Please note, this article does not represent personal financial advice.