Me and the wife are looking at replacing our 1994 (140K miles) Toyota Tercel in 1 or 2 years with a new car purchase. The current Toyota she bought in her name alone back in '94 (she's 42) and I've never bought a car (I'm 33). Just to see where we roughly stand today credit-wise, we each got FICO Standard via Equifax. My score is 704, she is 742.
If life goes as it should in the next 1-2 years our debt will be lower, our scores a bit higher and we'll have roughly $10K in a high-yield savings as a down-payment towards a $30K (roughly) car/SUV.
With that history aside, is there any tips or things we should be looking out for in the future when shopping for a new car? Personally I'm slighly confused as to how the "shopping around" procedure works.
I want to get a few pre-approved quotes to compare to a dealership we finally choose. One from our bank (Chase), and then maybe one or two others (Capital One and ???). Now, I assume we have to get the dealership quote first before getting the bank quotes, since we need to know from the dealership exactly how much we'll need to pay after the down-payment. Right?
Also, should she buy the car outright if she maintains a higher score than me by the time we purchase? Or can we do it jointly somehow? (one of us cosigns for the other). Will doing this allow us to drop the interest rates even further?
One last question on FICO scores in general. I noticed the report said it was helpful to have more open, old accounts that are paid and in good standing. I was under the impression that it was bad to have a lot of revolving credit available to you. Have I been mislead in that?
