I’ve had 3 cars in my life. The first car, an Infiniti I35, was given to me by my grandparents when I was a freshman in college. I stupidly crashed it bringing a friend to work and was left without a car for a few years. I bought my next car, another Infiniti, in early 2015 after working a post college job for about a year. This car was a headache from the very beginning.
A few months after I bought it, I was at a friends house after going to the club and had parked it on the side of the street, done this 1,000 times. While there, a drunk driver decided it was a good idea to go about 80 mph on a side street, hit 5 cars on both sides of the street, go airborne, flip his car over, bounce off my car and land on the car in front of mine.
After that accident my car wasn’t the same. It seemed every other week I was taking it to the shop to get something fixed. It was roughly costing me between $200-400 per month just in upkeep, not including the gas or insurance costs. After having that car for around a year I decided I was done with it. It was making noises while driving, it was costing me $40-50 in gas every 4-6 days, and the cost of taking it to the shop was way too much. I decided to get a new car.
I am not a car fanatic so my search was very simple and was based mostly around one question, “What is the miles per gallon (mpg)?” I did a quick google search and found Toyota Camrys have good gas mileage so I went to a Toyota website and started to search. Their cars were getting about 35-40 mpg and was pretty set on buying one. When all of a sudden I noticed this one car got over 50 mpg. Right then, I knew that that was my next car.
I called the dealer to have them put it aside, left work and test drove the car, and decided to buy it. From start to finish, it took me about 4 hours to buy it. While in the salesman’s office we ended up talking about soccer, school, and his children and I felt very comfortable and my guard was down. This was the part I would almost live to regret.
He put a sheet of paper in front of me and told me to pick a payment plan which allowed me to choose from different warranties. Naturally, since I had 0% APR I chose the standard, cheapest, option and we went on talking. For whatever reason I got a weird feeling and decided to look at the paper again. The cheapest option that I chose, was about $350 per month and after doing a quick calculation I realized it would have cost me $25, 200 over 6 years.
I remembered doing the math before I went to the dealership and dividing the total cost by 60 and 72 months, with no interest, just to give myself a rough idea of price and I’m so glad I did. If $20, 000 / 72 months = $277 per month, why the hell was my monthly bill $350?
I stopped him and asked why my bill was so much and if there was another payment option that wasn’t on the sheet of paper he gave me. He played dumb so I pushed more and said, “Is there a payment option to choose that is not on this paper? $20, 000 divided by 72 months is not $350 per month.”
Long story short, I ended up paying $282 per month, $20, 304 over 72 months, and got an automatic starter. If I hadn’t known the numbers before I went in I would have left the building smiling while paying an extra $5,000 and wouldn’t have realized it.
Car dealers are really good sweet talkers, they make you feel comfortable and relaxed, but all the while they are trying to make an extra buck, or in my case five thousand. When buying anything from salesmen, always be informed and have some prior knowledge because if you don’t, it could cost you big.
TLDR:
When making large purchases take a step back and look at the full picture to figure out if it makes sense. Also, calculate rough estimates ahead of time so if a bad deal is on the table, you can confidently turn it down and walk away.
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