Toyota Financing

Toyota offered me 3.9%, while my local credit union offered 2.49%. Opposite for my dad though. Toyota gave him 1.xx%.

 

I brought my pre-approved loan from chase with me (2.19% for 72 mo) and Toyota beat it.

I ended up with 1.89 for 72 mo.

 

I learned this on my first Taco. Those jekry's did everything under the sun to cook the books and make my deal as ambiguous as possible. They front loaded the interest, like a mortgage, and tried to hustle me after they promised it was a simple interest loan. My truck was bought in Nashville, TN while I lived in north Florida. It finally got to the point where I told the dealer to come pick up the truck if they were that incompetent to get my deal right. I love the trucks........hate the dealers.

 

Toyo just gave me 3.19 so I told them my local CU is offering 2.49 but they said they couldnt match that (Here in Central Florida). So in order to get a discount on the truck I have to keep financing with Toyo for 4 months, then can refinance with my local CU.... Difference comes to about $3/mo, so not sure I will bother unless local CU makes better offer in 4 mo.

 

Does refinancing impact your credit score? I know that just the process of purchasing my tacoma brought mine down about 60 points.

 

loaded question... refinancing often ends up that you pay more for the truck due to paying more interest or for a longer term. Unless you can refi from a much higher rate to the same or lesser term than what you have left on the original, it rarely makes long term financial sense to refinance (especially if your past the half way point in repayment of the origninal loan since you've already paid the majority of the interest. By refinancing you're merely starting that process over and will likely end up upside down on the vehicle.
My general rule of thumb when considering financing is to look at the final out of pocket numbers...
What will I pay if I keep the original loan and pay it off?
What will I pay if refinance and pay off the loan?

rarely is the answer to the second question less than the first, which is why it rarely saves you money to refinance. It's easy to save money from your monthly budget refinanciing and it's also really easy to overpay (in the total amount paid) significantly for the truck if you refinance the original loan.

WRT affecting your credit score, not likley if you already have a loan out, you're simply swapping installment loans. Debt to Income ratio also plays a factor... try to keep your debt low, income high, minimizing the number of installment loans and revolving accounts which carry balances and you'll be ok... your credit score determines your interst rate so it's not likely (unless something drastic has happened since you signed the original loan that the rate will be much different since interest rates have been rock bottom low for years now....)

 

Refinancing makes a lot of sense if you only used dealer financing for one of their rebates. For example, I'm in grad school and Toyota offers the $750 bonus cash for grad school students (along with their recent graduate program), but only if you use their financing. I took the $750 bonus cash and their 3.7% interest rate, and am immediately refinancing with USAA at 2.25%.