I knew what car I wanted (2015 Forester), so I went to Navy Federal for pre-approval. I'd only been a member 2 months and my scores aren't the best (EQ-654, TU-624, EX-623), and I have a few collections and a repo, so I wasn't expecting anything great, if at all, but I heard they're generous so I was hopeful. I applied for $25,000 at 60 months. Within 10 minutes, they approved me up to $31,000 for 60 months at 2.29%!
Then I went to the dealer to buy the car. Total for the entire car, including extended warranty and tags, was $29,500. Talked financing and they only approved me at 3.99%. Even though I could have finanaced it all with the NFCU approval, I put $6500 down and financed $23,000 through NFCU.
The pre-approval saved me about $1,050.
