Will You Make This Same Car Buying Mistake?

It's Friday afternoon. You leave work a little early and head on down to the car dealership. On the way you take special notice of three late model BMW's - the exact model you've been thinking about for the last several weeks. One is the same color you want. "Darn, that car looks good," you say almost aloud. You can't help thinking that the person driving that car looks pretty good too. Prosperous. Self assured. The kind of person who should be driving a Beamer like that. You can see you in that car. And with the dealership only a few minutes away you resolve to make that happen.

You make a couple extra turns so you can approach from the South and drive the full length of the lot before turning into the dealership. "There it is. Front row. Third car from the left. It's still here."

You park and head straight for the showroom. You don't even glance toward the lot. Better not to show any interest in case one of the salesman is looking out the window. You've got this whole car buying thing under control.

Two hours later you walk out of the dealership with the keys to Front Row-Third From The Left in your hand. You're tired. That was tougher than you thought it would be. You're happy alright. You got the car you dreamed about. But you're feeling a little uneasy.

You signed all the papers but the finance manager told you that there was a "little problem" with your credit report. " We couldn't finance you through our regular banks," he said, "but I think I can talk to some other financing people and take care of this on Monday." You only have the car - for sure - for the weekend and the dealer's finance guy is going to call you on Monday. What the heck. You bought that wall size plasma TV on credit a few months ago. If your credit report was so bad they wouldn't have you sold that TV, right?

We don't know what happened on Monday. Either our guy got yanked around like fresh taffy and paid way more than he should have, or he got his self-esteem pulverized when he handed back the keys to Front Row-Third From The Left.

This could have been a different story if our guy knew his FICO credit score and the financing rate he would qualify for in his part of the country before he walked into that car dealership. When the finance and insurance manager played the credit report gambit, our guy would have ready for him.

Car dealers make more money selling the financing packages of the people who buy their cars than they do the cars themselves. They may as well be selling a truckload of tomatoes. Same difference to them.

If you don't have a relative or a friend in the car finance business so that you can walk into a car dealership with your financing in hand, then you should be looking for something like the Car Coaching tool in the Suze Orman FICO Kit. The Orman FICO tool pulls information right off your credit report, tells you your FICO score for all three credit reporting bureaus, and then tells you the interest rate that a person with your credit history and FICO score would qualify for in the state you live in. You can't get better information than that.