When your old reliable car starts leaking oil, spluttering fumes, and refuses to turn over, you know you’re living on borrowed time. What may compound your worries is the financial burden of buying a new (or newer) car, especially if you think you have bad credit. Borrowing for a car when you have bad credit may involve a bit more work on your part, but it’s far from impossible. Here are some ways to get back behind the wheel, even if you think (or definitely have!) bad credit.
Confirm The Worst (Or Get A Pleasant Surprise)
It’s wise to verify your credit history with a credit reporting agency like Equifax, Experian, or illion if you think you may have terrible credit. You’re entitled to a free credit report every three months.
You can attempt to remove any mistakes in your credit report removed by working with the credit agency, such as incorrectly filed defaults or unpaid bills that were, in fact, paid. If there’s nothing that can be done, you can help yourself in other ways.
Paying Off Other Debts
Get more aggressive in trying to pay off any outstanding bills before obtaining quotations for a bad credit car loan. It might be worthwhile to combine your minor bills first, such as credit card debt, if you have a lot of them.
Saving money for a deposit helps demonstrate to lenders that you are a reduced risk – even if you are debt-free and your credit history needs to catch up to reflect it. When that happens, you need to work doubly hard to prove it.
Gathering Your Evidence
In order to assess your creditworthiness—or capacity to repay a loan—lenders and banks will do a credit check. However, they employ more than one measure to arrive at this conclusion. By demonstrating your reliability, you may increase your creditworthiness.
To demonstrate your income, excellent residential status, savings, and/or sincere efforts to settle existing debts, you should compile as many pay stubs as you can, together with tax records, proof of residency, and bank statements. This might cause lenders to stop and demonstrate that you’re not as high of a danger as your credit score suggests. In exchange, you’ll be rewarded with a more favorable rate for your diligence. Don’t hide anything – just be honest and answer questions as they come up.
Look For A Specialist Broker
Your bank or lender of first resort may look at your financial situation and refuse to deal with you outright. You should look for specialist car loan brokers who will explain what you’re up for in plain English. That, unfortunately, means higher-than-average interest rates.
Don’t be tempted to spread out your repayments as thinly as possible over time; the aim is to reduce the amount of interest paid while helping out your credit score by paying the loan off on time and in full. By doing a bit more legwork, you could save on your next car, even if you have bad credit.
