Within the next couple of months I will be hopefully purchasing a new MCS. I'm leaning towards the MINI Select option but what are the hidden details? I've read a little bit about it on other sites but it still seems a little hazy to me. I'm currently in college and the lower payments would be great but I do not want to lease a vehicle. I plan on keeping the car after college. Many thanks. c:
MIN Select is a way of deferring payments by making smaller payments during the term and then a balloon payment at the end of the term. You can also refinance the balloon when it becomes due. I would think the thing to do is to sit down with the finance manager at the dealer and determine what the real costs will be. By deferring the lump to the end it is quite possible you will pay a lot more interest over the life of the loan, especially if you finance the balloon payment at the end of the initial term.
Yep.....more interest but lower payments. See if they will do a conventional loan for say 6-8 yrs. That way you can lock in what will hopefully be the lowest rate.
Be very careful of any variable rate loan. This just a thought - Are a member of a credit union? They frequently offer very good car loan terms to members. You have options other than financing through the dealer. I'm not saying that the dealer isn't going to offer you a good deal, just that it's good to check out all of your options in order to make an informed decision. Good luck!
Personal opinion... Save as much as you can now, even if it means settin you back a few more months. The more you put down, the lower your payment so it's not too bad for 3 years or so. It's worth it in the end, and that's what you need to be thinking about. Last thing you want is to have your MINI, with 160,000 miles breaking down and still owe money.
Thanks for the responses. I do plan on saving up money to have a pretty decent down payment. I'll be near my MINI dealer this weekend so I'll stop in and talk to them.
I did the MINI Select on my MINI and it's nice to have the lower payments and I bought it at a time that I got to lock in the 1.9% intrest rate but it's going to end up being about 8 years before my car is paid off. Right now if I wanted to trade him in I wouldn't get enough in the trade in to pay him off. From what my dealer has told me, the MINI select intrest rate is something like 6 or 7% right now. It's better to just do regular financing and get the car paid off faster... I'm coming up on my refinancing thing and I still get the 1.9% (they changed this law about a month after I bought my car) but the payments go up a little and I have a loan for 5 more years. I guess it just depends on how much you want to spend per month and how long you want to be paying the car off... My dealership didn't really tell me any of this except for the intrest thing and they said my payments would be the same for another 3 years (they're not).
I'd echo a lot of the good advice here, particularly seeing if you can handle the payments on a "normal" 72-month loan. When I bought mine in March, MINI had 1.9% financing which I thought was great. With the payment and rate locked in, as your circumstances change (you graduate, hopefully land a good job) you can toss in a bit or a lot extra each month to pay it off faster. Or not, if things are tight in any particular month.