Just a side note... but the original post said that their car was financed with Santander. From my own experience, Santander increndibly puts in the fine print on their auto loans that you *cannot* pay off the loan early. Seriously., Sure, you can pay extra each month or even pay off the entire loan... but there is *no* reduction in interest whatsoever for early payoff.
I had borrowed $16K from Santander to buy a car with a 66-month loan, and when the loan balance was down to about $10K I enquired about refinancing it to reduce my interest since my credit had improved and I had never missed a payment. The very curt reply I got was that it was in my contract that i could not pay my loan off early and that there was no refund on interest for early payment. I couldn't believe it, but when I carefully read my finance agreement it was true! I could not even go to another bank or a credit union to pay off the Santander loan without paying the full amount including all projected interest on the loan! The way they get away with this is, they calculate the entire amount of the loan including interest, and then they loan that "lump sum" broken down into monthly payments.
So if the poster is looking into ways to refinance their auto loan, they had better check with Santander first to see if it's even possible. I know it wasn't with me. I was never so happy in my life as when I ultimately made the final payment on that car loan and was rid of that ripoff company for good.
