*Loan,banking and credit>>>auto loan

Thinking about an auto loan?

I am recovering from some financial problems from years ago. My credit scores are around the middle 650's. I recently purchased a home (1200 mortgage) and I have 2 mastercards with 0 balance. No other bills except utilities, cable, etc. Make approximately 65K per year. What am I looking at for interest rates? I have 5K for down payment. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

You should be able to take out an auto loan, not have to turn to credit cards and the like.

Here's a link with avg auto rates:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rate/auto_ho...

At 650 I would expect you would get around the average, definitely within 1% of the average. Take one of the calculators on that site and try to figure out how much car you can afford and still meet expenses. Anyway, your sources are an auto loan specialist, a bank, or the dealer. Call one of each to get an idea of what terms you can exepct.

Once you have a price range figured, you'll know how much of a loan you have to take out and can shop for a model of car. Once you settle on a few models, see if dealers/manufacturers are running rebates or interest rate promos on them. Then you either go to a dealer and haggle, or use something like CarsDirect.

For what its worth, I've found dealer rates are usually the best, and as a rule of thumb, each level "down" in credit adds 1% to the advertised promotional interets rates.

Good Luck!

Kinda vague on the question, but I'll try.

Look at used and lease returned vehicles that are in good shape but have already depreciated. No need to throw away money on a brand new car if you don't have to.

Citi bank WAS having a special for balance transfer checks at 2.99% - which they even let you deposit into you bank account, or use as a purchase check. I think they just upped the rate to 4.99%. Even so, that's lower than many finance rates for car loans at banks.

That's what I did anyway, and it worked out well for me. Lower insurance payments too, since I don't require full coverage.

Hope this helps.
You may also want to try a Credit Union if you can qualify for membership. There interest rates seem to be lower than a lot of banks