topic Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process. in Auto Loans

If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

DeeBee78 — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 05:02:46 GMT

I have an Ally loan with a 72 month term and I am currently 14 months into it. Right now I am in a position to start paying much more towards the principal, to the point where I will have it paid off in 24 more months, or so I thought.

I already pay a bit more than the amount due each month, always choosing the option to apply the extra towards the financed amount, which is the closest thing Ally offers to making a principal payment. In January I am ramping that up to $1,000 a month and I wanted to set it and forget it. Well you can't with Ally. If you setup automatic payments, any additional amount will go towards future payments. There is no way to setup automatic payments that put the extra towards the financed amount.

Ok, so I thought I'd spend 20 minutes and setup every payment manually for the next two years. Nope. You can only setup three payments in advance. That means every three months (or less) you need to log back in and setup more manual payments. So you want to pay off your Ally loan early, you have to micromanage it until you complete it.

I am thinking about just pulling the money out of savings and paying the thing off now, but I am expecting a bit of a windfall in December, and a nice bonus in March that I would rather use for it. Can't wait to be washed of them.

Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

jeffm4688 — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:28:45 GMT

Auto loans are simple interest, where every payment goes towards the interest that has generated since the last payment and then towards principal. Interest reduces over time as your principal naturally decreases. You're overthinking this. Them "applying the extra towards the next payment" isn't it going towards the next payment due its just their system knocking the due date further out because of the fact that you're paying ahead.

I've paid ahead on every auto loan and they all do the same junk where they move the due date further up but it doesn't matter as every payment you make goes to interest and then straight to principal.

You can verify this by looking at am amortization calculator. but eventually if you just keep paying the principal will drop to 0 and the loan will close years ahead of time.

Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

MyDataMyChoice — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:09:09 GMT

mail in the payments in Bill Pay

Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

DeeBee78 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 04:02:26 GMT

@jeffm4688 wrote:
You're overthinking this. Them "applying the extra towards the next payment" isn't it going towards the next payment due its just their system knocking the due date further out because of the fact that you're paying ahead.

So this is not what I am doing and I'm not sure why you think I am. I am specifically choosing the option to apply the additional payment towards the outstanding amount financed, not towards future payments. This, per Ally, is going towards principal.

My post was about how Ally makes it difficult to pay off the loan early with automatic payments becuase they don't have the option to apply additional funds towards principal, and you can't schedule more than 90 days of payments out at a time. I am a 'set it and forget' it type when it comes to paying my bills, and Ally's lack of features doesn't align with how I manage my finances.

Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

Kforce — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 19:07:31 GMT

@DeeBee78 wrote:
My post was about how Ally makes it difficult to pay off the loan early with automatic payments because they don't have the option to apply additional funds towards principal, and you can't schedule more than 90 days of payments out at a time.

I agree why only have auto payments for one payment path.

This does place Ally at a disadvantage on my list.

Never had an issuer not credit extra payments as principle-only,

outstanding-balance can be the same if extra applied is the same day

as the regular payment. No time for any extra interest, however, why not

make it an auto option like the pushed out regular payments !!

Re: If you're thinking of paying off your Ally Auto loan early, you're in for a painful process.

Realist — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 11:19:00 GMT

If there's no option to pay directly towards the balance, keep prepaying as you are, and when the day comes to near payoff, ask for a payoff amount. Another option is to force their hand and refinance the loan elsewhere. Eventually the payments will settle.

I remember an in-law mentioned this about Ally. They push out the dates, and he was years into non-payment.