Refinance or buy another car

[Anonymous]

Earlier this year I purchased a 2013 nissan sentra with a 15.9% interest rate. My credit score has gone up significantly since then.  Next year I am thinking about atleast refinancing the loan or just trading it in for a new car as I want either a camry or an honda accord.  In march of next year 2016 I have a public record from a sallie mae student loan, that will be coming off of my credit report  and I am thinking that once it comes off my credit score will probably go up a bit.  Currently as you can see below my Transunion just went above 600 last week and hopefully equifax and experian will both go above 600 when the public record comes off next year if not before. i actually wasn't expecting my transunion to go up as high as it did until next year.  I am thinking about refinancing next in hopes of getting a much lower interest rate. i currently owe about $10,600 on the car and I got an offer in the mail from the nissan dealership where I got my oil change to trade in my car for a little over $12,000.  If do decide to trade it in I want to pay the loan down some more so I will have more money going toward the next car I get.  Right now the car has about 33,000 miles on it and it runs good i just want something a little bit bigger.  So the question is what do you all think I should do, refinance the car next year or trade it in?

[Anonymous]

You'll need your scores above 620 or so to get into refi territory, and even then it will be iffy. On the flip side, with dealer financing, if you're trading in with actual equity, you can probably get a pretty good interest rate on an altima, which is a very nice vehicle that is similar to the camry and accord, size-wise (but more fun to drive). 

Your best bet is to make as large of payments as possible to get this vehicle paid off quickly, but ideally you want to make 2 years of payments as that will have the maximum effect on your auto enhanced score. Do you have other negatives? Do you have credit cards? If that negative is your only your score should go up rapidly as you make on time payments to everything else. 

[Anonymous]

First of all, congrats on getting your credit score up. I would trade in the car and upgrade. Try to get a friend to cosign as this would lower the money factor or apr. Most car dealers do not see a difference with a 650 or a 900 fico auto score. Its either they give you their promotional apr or not. Since your score is slightly above 600, i'm sure that dealers will be able to extend their offers to you.