I read somewhere here recently that DCU allows you to pay their loans up to 3 months ahead. Does anyone have any more information on this? If my next payment, I pay 3 months worth, will it automatically push my payment ahead? Or do I have to call in to make a special payment?
Hey Klex,
It was a while for me with my car loan. I believe you are right, after a certain point they don't allow you to pay ahead but rather just pay principal/Dialy interest accumulated from your last payment. I pretty sure you are right about 3 months (Car payments back then were 1K/month) of course they will take your money but the systems are limited on paying ahead.
Fee
I bet you could always push a mail-in payment
@Anonymous wrote:I do have a DCU HELOC. DCU lets you make regular payments and principal-only payment. A principal-only payment does not change the next payment date.
If you make a regular payment of any amount larger or equal to the minimum payment the payment date will be pushed forward automatically by one month.
To push the payment date by three months, just make three regular payments larger or equal to the minimum payment. I not sure whether you can make three payments on the same day, so you might have to spread the payments over three days.
The system even lets you move the payments date by more than three months. But then DCU send you a nasty letter that you are not allowed to push the payment date by more than three months and resets the payment date to three months ahead of schedule. So if you want to make more than three payments in one month, some of them have to be principal-only payments.
That's why I'm confused. My auto loan payments are due on the 15th of each month. One time I tried seeing if I could pay 1/2, every two weeks, but the first payment went to the principal and then the full payment was still due two weeks later, so I figured I couldn't do it. Now I just pay once a month on the 10th.
Then someone posted here that the max is 3 months in advance, so I was wondering what would happen if I made a payment 3x the normal amount at once? Would that automatically push it out? Maybe I'll try 2x to test it first.
@Anonymous wrote:
@KLEXH25 wrote: One time I tried seeing if I could pay 1/2, every two weeks, but the first payment went to the principal and then the full payment was still due two weeks later, so I figured I couldn't do it. Now I just pay once a month on the 10th.
How are you making the payments? When I make payments at the DCU website, I can choose between "Make a regular payment" and "Pay to Principal". Do you have that choice? Maybe that choice is only available for helocs but not for auto loans.
@Anonymous That's a good point. I automated my payments, so I'll have to look again, but I think I did see that option. Or maybe I only saw it from the desktop but not the app? I'm going to play around with it and report back.
@Anonymous wrote:How are you making the payments? When I make payments at the DCU website, I can choose between "Make a regular payment" and "Pay to Principal". Do you have that choice? Maybe that choice is only available for helocs but not for auto loans.
I have a car loan and manually make my payments and I have the choice of Regular Payment or Pay to Principal:
I've always just made "regular" monthly payment, although I do round up from the $246.58 minimum payment to an even $250. And I think I remember a member here saying he had paid his DCU car loan 1 year ahead. If you want to pay ahead a few months I would just make a regular payment, when I do that the payment date for the payment for next month shows up. Pay that and it should just keep on putting another month ahead. For example, pay Aug. and Sept. will show up, pay that and Oct. should show up, etc. If you make one large payment I'm pretty sure it will just apply the surplus against principal and a payment will still be due next month.
My car loan is 2.99% so I'm not in any rush to pay it ahead.
@DaveInAZ wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:How are you making the payments? When I make payments at the DCU website, I can choose between "Make a regular payment" and "Pay to Principal". Do you have that choice? Maybe that choice is only available for helocs but not for auto loans.
I have a car loan and manually make my payments and I have the choice of Regular Payment or Pay to Principal:
I've always just made "regular" monthly payment, although I do round up from the $246.58 minimum payment to an even $250. And I think I remember a member here saying he had paid his DCU car loan 1 year ahead. If you want to pay ahead a few months I would just make a regular payment, when I do that the payment date for the payment for next month shows up. Pay that and it should just keep on putting another month ahead. For example, pay Aug. and Sept. will show up, pay that and Oct. should show up, etc. If you make one large payment I'm pretty sure it will just apply the surplus against principal and a payment will still be due next month.
My car loan is 2.99% so I'm not in any rush to pay it ahead.
Yeah I'm not seeing that option in the app. It must be on the desktop version. I know I've seen it before, I'm just wondering if it's possible to pay quarterly. I'm not exactly in a rush to pay off either.