The topic of today’s Moneysavers is car loans and their impact on your budget.
According to a recent post on LendingTree, here is a quick summary of car loan information for the first quarter of 2019:
Americans have almost $1.2 trillion in outstanding car loan debt
The average new car loan was $32,187 and the average used car loan was $20,247
The average payments for these loans were $554 for a new car and $391 for the used
If a consumer leased a vehicle in the same time period the average payment was $457
The shocker for me remains that the average loan term was 69 months for new car loans and 65 months for used car loans.
Overall, car loan debt service is taking a big chunk out of personal budgets. Here are three posts we came across on this subject that you should read and understand.
This post discusses what you should consider in the process of buying your car to make sure you make the right purchase decision. If you buy the wrong vehicle it can really hurt you financially if you need to trade it in for a different model shortly after purchase.
This is an article from CNBC’s Make It program. It discusses that over the past few years, car prices have been rapidly increasing. While that can be a good sign for the economy, it means consumers will have a harder time affording new vehicles. And because 64% of U.S. adults drive daily, as prices go up, many who rely on their cars for transportation could be forced to take out long-term auto loans in order to afford one.
This post discusses the more frequently encountered situation where people are upside down on their car loans. What this means is that they owe more on their car loan than the car is worth; often referred to as having negative equity. The article discusses what you can do to prevent this unfortunate situation from happening to you.
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