Sep 15
adminAuto Loan Affordability, Auto Insurance, Auto Loan Payment, Car Dealership, Car Purchase, Dollar Figure, Finance, Fuel Charges, Installments, Insurance Charges, Maths, New Car, Point Of Reference, Professional Sales, Regard, Rundown, Sales Tax, Sales Tax Rate, Sharks, Shopping
Before you start shopping for a new car, it is always wise to calculate your auto loan payment beforehand. You must know in advance that how much you can afford to pay every month for your car. Remember, it is not just the monthly installments, but you are strongly recommended to consider other expenses as well, such as fuel charges, auto insurance charges, and other such things. So, do your budgeting thoroughly. If you don’t have a reasonable point of reference on your financial affordability, you will be trapped badly by those professional sales sharks waiting for you a car dealership. Following is a brief rundown on how to do your maths in this regard.
Average Price Of The Car
When it comes to making calculations about your auto loan payment, the first thing that you have to do is to find out the average price of the vehicle you are considering purchasing. You must know a solid dollar figure that how much your dealership is going to charge you. To demonstrate the budgeting strategies, we will assume this average price as $10000.
Actual Amount Of Loan
Once you know the purchase price, you can now deduct the amount that you are going to pay as a down payment. If you already have an old car, which you are going to exchange for the new car, you should subtract the value of that car also from the purchase price. This will give you the final amount that you want your lender to finance. Let’s say you deduct $2000. So, the actual amount of loan in our case is $8000.
Sales Tax
Sales tax is another important factor to consider while you are doing your calculations for auto loan payment. If you don’t want to pay the sales tax on your car purchase from your own pocket, you should add this amount to the actual amount that has to be financed. Here, it is important for you to keep in mind that you have to calculate the sales tax on the actual price of the car (before deductions). If the sales tax rate is 8%, it amounts to $800. So, the total amount that you want the lender to finance is $8800. Think about any other expenses that the dealer likely to charge. Add all those charges to this amount to get a final figure.
Interest Rate
Estimate the rate of interest that you are likely to pay on your loan. The interest rate can be very low if you have a very good credit score. On the other hand, if you have a poor credit, the rate can be much higher. If you have bad credit, you might not even be offered a loan. So, study this aspect wisely. For the sake of example, let’s assume the rate is 10%.
Loan Period
The last thing that you have to consider while calculating auto loan payment is the period of the loan. In general, the period varies from 60 months to 84 months.
Now, you can use a calculator to find out the exact monthly auto loan payment that you will have to pay.
Sep 03
adminHpi Check Apples To Apples, Bank, Borrowing Money, Business, Business Financing, Business Owners, Capital Assets, Check, Duration, Equipment Finance, Expansion Project, Finance Companies, Finance Company, Finance World, Financing, Fixed Deposits, Good Reason, Interest Rate, Interest Rates, Multiple Services, Point Of Reference, Reality, Reality Check, Secure Place, Set In Stone
Business owners and managers want to compare equipment finance companies to their bank and for a good reason; a bank is a company’s first point of reference when borrowing money or financing equipment or an expansion project. A bank is the most obvious place to start and a secure place to store your money and use their multiple services. But what a bank does not do well, both historically because of their structure and the recent tightening of the credit market, is offer business financing for capital assets (equipment). Yet many people get confused when looking for an equipment loan because they are not seeing the whole picture; this is a case where you definitely want to compare apples to apples to get the best results.
Here are a few points to compare; these are not set in stone but based on years of experience, these trends apply a majority of the time.
1) Total Dollars Financed – banks normally require that you keep a balance of 20% or 30% of the equipment loan amount on deposit.
This means they are only financing 70% or 80% of your equipment costs because you have to keep a certain amount of YOUR money in a fixed account for the duration of the loan. In contrast, an equipment finance company will cover 100% of the equipment including all “soft” costs and will only request a one or two month prepayment. No fixed deposits required.
2) Soft Costs – banks also will normally not cover “soft” costs like labor, warrantees, consulting and installation which means these costs come out of your pocket. An equipment finance company will cover 100% of the equipment price including “soft” costs and some projects can be financed with 100% “soft” costs which no bank would ever consider.
3) Interest Rates – this is the most popular question in the finance world; what’s my rate? If the bank requires 30% deposit in a fixed account then that automatically raises a 5% interest rate to a 20% rate.
Now people will argue that you get that deposited money back at the end of the term but that is money which you do not have access to and has an opportunity cost associated with it. Equipment finance companies target their financing rates between 3-5% for cities and 7-9% for commercial financing which is a real fixed rate and not under-stated as the bank rates can be thus independent finance company rates are very competitive with “true” bank rates.
4) Process Speed – banks often take weeks to review and approve a finance request while independent finance companies normally only take a few days and can work much more quickly. Finance underwriters only review business financing while a bank has other types of requests clogging their channel.
Banks also have many more levels of approval and review to pass while independent finance companies normally only have two, underwriting and credit committee. Even with complicated deals, the finance company’s process is always faster.
5) Guarantee – banks require, as a standard part of their documentation, a blanket lien on all assets, both personal and business assets are used as guarantee against default on the loan. Your business assets, your home, your car, and your boat can all be on the line when entering into a bank transaction. This may also be the case with an equipment financing company but if your business operation is solvent then only your business will be listed as collateral and not your personal assets; this is known as a “corp only” approval.
6) Monitoring – banks require yearly “re-qualifying” of all their business accounts which means on the anniversary date of your loan each year, you must submit requested financial documents to assure the bank that everything is going well and nothing has affected your business in a negative way. Finance companies do not require anything during the term of the loan or finance as long as the monthly payments are made on time. Nobody will be checking into your business or policing what you do.
When comparing your bank financing to an independent equipment finance company, you have to make sure you are evaluating all the key parameters, not just one. Clearly, the fine print and terms of the transaction are more important than the big numbers. Banks work well within their space but have proven time and again not to be as flexible or solution-oriented as an independent finance company which solely focuses on business lending can be.
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