okay so if you happen to be in the market and you're looking to buy a car whether it's a new one or a used one. there are a few things that you need to do before you go out and buy a car.
THINGS TO DO BEFORE BUYING A CAR
these three specific things that I'm going to talk about. hopefully, they can help you with your car buying experience and you can learn something new.
INSURANCE QUOTE
the first thing that you need to do before You Buy a Car and this one's really simple but a lot of people don't even think about doing this before they buy a car.
it's just the fact that you need to get an insurance quote on that specific make and model before you go out and buy it.
you might be surprised maybe the car that you're looking into has a 200 a month insurance premium whereas you're used to about a hundred bucks a month so that's a big difference in your budget just in insurance and that's something that you're never going to be considering when you're buying a car.
you're looking at the price of the car and different things like that you're not really paying attention to the insurance premiums that you have to pay.
get an insurance quote before you go out and look at that car.
that's a good idea to get a baseline of how much you can expect to pay if you buy that specific make and model.
CHECK REVIEWS OR DO RESEARCH
The next thing you should do before you go out and buy a car is to check some online reviews of people that have actually driven the car.
if you just like it because it looks nice and a lot of people have it that doesn't necessarily mean that it's reliable in all the different categories that might be important to you.
like maybe for instance the interior maybe a lot of people complain that it's broken down over just a couple years and maybe that's something that would really bother you if you own that car.
it's a good idea to find the specific models that you're looking into and check reviews as far as people that have actually driven the car.
once you get inside those categories you can find out if it's maybe the car that you still want or maybe it's not.
when i'm personally looking at the reviews of a car i'm looking at all of the different categories and i'm not expecting the best in everything i'm expecting good overall reviews on most of the categories.
for instance if it was a five star rating in every category and most of them got three to five then i would consider that pretty good as far as the car that i was looking into.
honestly if you're reading real reviews from real customers then they're going to be honest and a lot of the time honesty isn't going to get you five stars in every single category.
if that really is the case and these are people that have driven that car then it probably is a very exceptional car to be looking at.
outside of reviews i'd even do some research on the little things that you don't really pay attention to like maybe the gas mileage or even the fuel type that the car requires.
a lot of the time you might find that the car you're looking into requires premium gas.
if you drive a lot and you run the numbers that might not be something that you want in the car that you're driving.
MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE
another thing you can Do Before You Buy a Car here is you can look up the owner's manual for that specific car and you can check the maintenance schedule.
a lot of cars out there they might require an oil change every 10 000 miles and some cars still require the oil change every 3000 miles.
if you check stuff like that like the spark plugs the oil changes transmission fluid all that kind of stuff on those different intervals that might be a better value or worse value based on the car that you're looking at according to the maintenance schedule.
if i were comparing two similar cars and one of them required an oil change at 10 000 miles and then the other one at 3 000 miles i would actually pay attention to that.
if you have to go in often to get those oil changes you do have to pay for it and it's not always the most convenient thing.
if you pay attention to the different schedules maintenance schedules you might find that one car is better than the other just as far as that stuff goes as well.
AFFORDABILITY
One of the most important things you can do before you go out and buy a car is to know exactly how much car you can afford.
this one's a little bit tricky because everybody's going to have a different opinion on how much car you can afford.
i have a basic guideline that you can follow if you want to follow it go for it if not it's just my opinion.
the way that i figure out car affordability is i have three specific rules that you need to follow.
so the first rule that i have as far as finding out if you can afford the car or not is that you need to be putting 20 down on that car or more. now i know this is hard to do but it's just the first rule that i have to figure out if you can afford the car or not.
now the next rule that i have is that you should never exceed a 60 month loan so for instance.
you're looking at a 72 month or an 84 month loan don't even bother with those because a five year loan is the longest that you should be taking on.
i would prefer if you could stick with a 24 or 36 month loan because obviously you can get those paid off faster but as a max 60 months is it.
finally as far as your car payment goes you don't want your car payment and the other associated costs like insurance and registration to exceed 10 of your net take-home pay.
meaning the money that you're taking home after taxes. so as an example let's say that you make three thousand dollars a month after taxes that would mean ten percent of that would be a three hundred dollar total payment.
your car payment should probably be about 200 bucks and then let's just assume that the other associated costs are about 100 making it a grand total of 300 which is 10 of your net take-home pay.
if you're making 3 000 a month and you found a car that you could put 20 percent down on and then you have the term at five years if that payment came in around 200 bucks a month.
you can probably afford that car. so just remember that before you go out and buy a car you need to get an insurance quote on that car do some research find out some reviews on that specific make and model that you're looking at and then find out if you can actually afford the car that you want to be buying.
So these are top 4 ways oe things that you should do before buying a card.