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In your credit situation it may be best to just find the car you want and let the dealer shop the loan. You may get a better rate than you think. In any case if you apply extra to the car loan each month you will probably be able to refinance to a decent rate with a year of on time car payments. If you really want to try for pre-approval before you go to the dealership then apply at Capital One auto loans. They will almost certainly give you some kind of approval. But rate shopping on your own with multiple lenders when there are credit challenges involved is not the best idea.
Congrats on the approval. A couple of things:
1. Insallment loans like car loans behave differently than revolving like credit cards. Utility of installment loans doesn't really matter. Getting the loan to under 50% is really going to do anything score wise. It's just important to make your payments on time and not have any lates.
2. Take that $2k and put towards the loan and pay extra every month. This is not for credit reasons but for refinancing reasons. You have a very long loan at a very high interest rate. Paying the scheduled payments is going to have you very very upside down for a very long time preventing you from refinancing to a better loan. Pay as much as you can comfortably afford towards the prinicple every month and then in six months or a year apply to a good CU for a refinance to cut that rate in half.
Why did you go with a 72 month loan?
The dealer could have gotten you a much better rate on a 36 month loan with the full $3,000 down.
Pay as much as you can as fast as you can. Then refi ASAP. Now you are paying over $7 per day in interest on that vehicle. That alone is eating up your fuel savings not even counting the $16k cost to aquire the vehicle.
The ole buy a new car to save gas rationalization
I feel like if I were to post my thoughts on here always, I'd come off as a real jerk; but sometimes tough love is what we need.
At that rate, who cares what makes your credit score marginally better, just get the darn loan down down down fast fast fast.
I sorta agree with the idea to sell, but at 75k/yr and the ability to pay it off quick, it sounds like you dont have cashflow problems. I have an extra car and considered selling it. But then realized at 6k miles per year, I could drive it for another 6-10. So, why give that up to save $300 in insurance and tagging.
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