How much would my monthly payment for my car be?

Depends upon how much you put up front and what the interest rate is. Lots of online calculators for this.

Will you have to pay some money when you get the car? Of course you will.

Really? I’m interested in a 2009 Dodge Charger..

Here’s a link to an online auto loan calculator. You need to know the interest rate, the term of the loan (36 months, 48 months, etc.), the price of the car less the down payment, if any, and then voila! There’s your monthly payment.

Are you financing the car through a dealer or through a bank or credit union?

@lillycoyote A dealer.

@projectilevomit You might get a better interest rate at a bank or credit union. But depending how good your credit is the dealer may want a down payment.

Here are a couple of links about buying your first car. Best to be informed because that’s a lot of money, a lot of debt to take on and you want to do it right.

Sorry, I’m middle-aged. I never thought it would happen to me really, but we tend to get all lecturey at a certain point, some of us can’t seem to help it. I apologize :-)

Anyway, here’s a link: firstcarguide.com that gives some pretty good information about buying your first car and here’s their advice on why it’s a good idea to put up a down payment. Their FAQ page is essential reading too.

Good luck! Have fun!

A far better way to buy a first car is to use the Dave Ramsey method where you buy a used car for cash, save and bank the car payment for 10 months, then take the cash and the used car, and trade up to a better used car. Continue to bank the car payment amount each month, and trade up every 10 months.

@BarnacleBill I like the principles of buying used and avoiding the debt if possible; I’ve never owned a new car and only just graduated to “certified pre-owned” with my last car. But buying a car, any car, makes me insane, really, it stresses me out so much I can’t imagine doing in every 10 months. And the trips to motor vehicle. I register mine vehicles for two years at a pop just so I don’t have to go to the DMV any more than absolutely necessary. That every 10 months thing would be a recipe for insanity for me.

My guess is that since this is your first car, you probably don’t have great credit yet so the interest is going to be a bitch and you probably will need to put at least 10% down up front.

Odds are that you’ll get 60-month financing as that is fairly typical. Of course, depending on how they calculate the interest, it may be in your best interest to pay more than the payment in order to knock down the principle and thus reduce the overall cost of the car… but not all loans allow you to do that.

Just the principle alone is $16.67/month per $1000 financed for 60 months, or $13.89/month per $1000 for 72-months. Even at 0% interest for 60 months, if they let you get it with zero down then that is $409.83/month ($341.53/month if they let you do 72-month financing) and the interest will likely add another 30–50% on top of that; somewhere over $500/month unless you make a hefty down payment.

@BarnacleBill Personally, I buy cheap cars (usually around $500 or less) and run them into the ground. I typically get a year out of them for about the cost of one or two average car payments and saving a few grand for other things (like rent) in the process. My first car was $500, took $300 in repairs over the 2½ years I had it, and was still running like a champ when I got rid of it; a real bargain.

@jerv would it be better to buy it used?
To me, I do not see the difference in buying it used.

It depends on the price. I don’t know how much they will knock off for a car that is still relatively new, but odds are that you will be better off.

Another possibility is a “dealer demo. My stepfather got a good deal on a then-new ‘95 Celica with zero owners and ~5,000 miles on it.

Personally, I wouldn’t buy a car that wasn’t broken in (in other words, <1000 miles) even if I had the money anyways as those first few hundred miles require some pampering. babying, and special treatment that I am not inclined to deal with.

@projectilevomit I’ve never owned a new car nor would I ever buy one. They lose value the minute you drive them off the lot and as @jerv points out, they do sometimes need some pampering. I think certified pre-owned is a pretty good way to go. You get a better deal on the car, it’s broken in and you get a warranty but you still have a reliable car and I think it’s really important for a woman, particularly, to have a reliable car rather than a beater. That’s just the way the world is. Women are simply more vulnerable if they are alone, with a broken down car on the side of the road. Even with cell phones and AAA or other road side assistance services it can take them an hour or more to get to you. Better for your car not to break down in the first place. And while I’m lecturing you, :-) when you get your car you should learn how to change a tire. My father made sure I knew how; so I could change a flat and be on my way. Plus, you always feel a little bit safer with a tire iron in your hand and it will impress the guys if you know how to change a tire.

This is all confusing, aha.
My Mom said Dodge’s are bad cars because they have too much power and guzzle too much gas. :/

@projectilevomit Yes it is very confusing and very stressful. As I mentioned in one of my posts above buying car always makes me kind of insane and I’ve done 6 or 7 times in my life. Next to buying a house, a car is the biggest purchase, the most important purchase most people make. And everyone has an opinion on what and how to buy a car, boy do they ever. Your parents, you uncle, your neighbor, strangers on the street, everyone’s got an opinion and everyone’s opionion is different and everyone is sure they’re right. But you have to hang tough, darling, and figure it out. Particularly because what you’re talking about spending here, $24,590, is a lot of money, that’s a lot of debt.

I put that in the loan calculator and with no down payment and an interest rate of only 5.64% for 60 months, that’s about a $500 a month on your car payment. $500 that is already spoken for out of your paycheck every month, for the next 5 years. And that doesn’t include insurance. And you will need to have comprehensive insurance on a car you owe money on. Liability _and_collision. That’s probably going to be at least a hundred dollars a month, though I’m not sure about that, but with gas your car is probably going to cost you upwards of if not more than $600 a month for the next 5 years. Wow! That sounds so painful. I think you should really consider getting a much less expensive car. Really. A nice used Subaru or Nissan or something. :-) Safe, reliable, a lot less expensive but still fun to drive.

@projectilevomit “Man (or woman) who has car, always have hand in pocket”

That’s an old saying about car ownership. There will be unanticipated costs in any car purchase. Never forget that.

A used car: You might be buying someone elses problems.

A new car: You might buy a lemon or a very fault-ridden car that the dealer/manufacturer won’t want to know. That’s happened in Australia.

Then again, you just might buy a car that will last you 10-years and only cost the usual maintenance and running costs. That’s the car you should buy.

@Andreas I figure that any car I buy will cost me about $1,000 in the end. Given that most were purchased for under $500, you can guess what that means. My current car cost $300 plus four struts ($500) and some minor wear-and-tear things like headlights and batteries. I am pretty good at fixing my own cars though, so my costs are reduced; try getting a head gasket done for $50 instead of $700–1,200!

So you are correct that used cars may cause you to inherit another person’s problems, but that is unlikely to be an issue for a relatively new used car. It’s cars like mine that make it a dead certainty; I usualy get one that is about 12 years old with 150–200K miles, and my current one was 25 years old at 212K miles when I bought it, so I knew it was going to have issues. Fortunately, the seller was honest and knowledgeable enough to tell me what they were.

Dodges tend to be odd to work on and they are definitely hit or miss (more often “miss”) on reliability. I’ve seen very few Dodges make it through their first decade without some serious issues and even fewer make it to age 15 at all. If you plan to trade the car in when you get it paid off then it isn’t an issue, but I would never buy a car that got outlived by it’s loan… again. My wife bought a two year old Saturn before we were married and when it blew it’s second transmission two years later—(age four, 79K miles) we gave it back to the bank and still had to pay on it for a while after that.—

New cars are nice and sexy, but they are a depreciating asset whose value drops quickly. Hondas and Toyotas fare better there, partly for retaining resale value and partly by still being in decent shape 10–20 years later.

@Andreas and @jerv Boys, can you take that outside please, if you don’t mind. I think, I hope that here, on this thread at least, that we are, or at least should be, trying to do our best to ahelp @projectilevomit find a car that is safe, affordable and reliable. Sorry about the patronizing lecture but I think we should try to stay on track, for her sake. :-) Any objections? If so, have at me. If not, thank you!

@projectilevomit wrote, “My Mom said Dodge’s are bad cars because they have too much power and guzzle too much gas. :/”

Well, it’s far too broad to say that about all vehicles from Dodge. Stay away from Hemi-powered V8 engines though, if that’s really a concern. The Charger can be had with your choice of a couple of six-cylinder engines that provide adequate power and decent gas mileage.

—

Also, a common ploy used at dealerships is to get you to think less about the total price of the car and to focus instead on what monthly payment you can afford.

They can lower the monthly payment a couple of ways: by extending the overall term from 5 up to 6 and sometimes even 7 years – or – by tacking a large balloon payment on at the end of the term, essentially assuming you will sell the car at the end of the loan.

Either of those routes can be troublesome, leading you to be upside down on the loan, where you owe more on the vehicle than it’s actually worth. This sucks if you find yourself in a position where you need to sell the car because you can’t afford the payments any more only to realize that if you sell it, you’ll still owe a largish lump sum to the bank.

For new cars off the dealer lot, I always prefer Honda or Toyota brand vehicles and never take a loan longer than 5 years. Anything else, and I would instead look at used cars a year or two old that have already done the majority of their depreciation and hence can’t be upside down.

Oh, and to directly answer the original question:

A loan for $24,590 over 60 months:
– @ 0% APR = $410/mo.
– @ 2% APR = $431/mo.
– @ 4% APR = $452/mo.
– @ 6% APR = $475/mo.
– @ 8% APR = $498/mo.

Down payment, trade-in, sales tax, tags, title, license, other fees are likely all additional, negotiable to some degree, and may or may not be included in the total amount financed.

@Andreas and @jerv I wanted to apologize for my comment above. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes; channeling my inner megalomaniac, I guess. I had no right to tell you what you can and cannot say and I certainly had no right to try to direct the thread, to try to decide what comments and information are or are not relevant to the OP.

Yes, @robmandu, there are a lot of additional things to consider.

Here in King County, WA, the sales tax is 9.5%, or another $2336.05 . While the sales tax is probably lower where you are, @projectilevomit , that can still mean another grand or more. You may be able to get that rolled into the loan, but maybe not.

Titles are generally cheap enough to be relatively negligible, but tags can run you a pretty penny as well. Many places base their fee at least in part on the value of the car. For instance, in NH, I had an old Subaru that was taxed at it’s original sale price of ~$25,000 minus adjustments for age. Fortunately it was old enough (14 years old) that that age adjustment knocked my annual registration to just under $200, but you won’t get the same break with a car that is only a year or two old, so registration could run a few hundred a year.

Comprehensive insurance on a $25,000 car is unlikely to be cheap. I am in my late-30, married, clean record, and have the minimum coverage and I still pay about $500/year on my far-less-valuable car. I don’t know about where you are, but if you don’t already have proof of insurance, you can’t register a car here, so if your home state is like WA, that is more money to pay before you can hit the road. For all practical purposes, you can consider it a down payment (of sorts) since you aren’t driving off the lot without spending that money as well, and you can’t tack that into your loan.

One thing that @robmandu forgot to mention is that as soon as you drive it off the lot, you will probably be “upside down” unless you have a good trade-in (unlikely since this is your first car) and/or a hefty down payment. You do not want to find yourself in the position my wife and I were in; we owed over $6,000 on a car that sold at auction for a mere $1,500… and the bank was adamant about getting the difference. So make sure that you are both able and willing to keep this car for a few years. If you try to trade it in before the loan is nearly over, odds are that you’ll lose money on the deal, and if it blows up (like our Saturn did) then you are definitely screwed. Oh, and if you lose your job or something, you are also screwed since the bank will still get your money from you whether you still have the car or not. and whether you have an income or not.

Another thing is that many new cars require getting their maintenance done at a dealership or other “authorized” (translation – “overpriced”) garage to keep the warranty intact/valid. Factor that expense into your cost of ownership as the more money you pay for service, the less you have left over for car payments, insurance, rent, food, etcetera. My car’s warranty expired before you were born, so I am free to work on my car myself or take it to a shade-tree mechanic that charges half of what most garages do, but with a new car you won’t have that option.

Now, I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to scare you out of buying a new car. I just want to make sure that you know what you are getting yourself into. There is a hell of a lot more to buying a car than just “How much is the monthly payment?”, and a lot of dealers and banks make a shitload of money off of people who can’t do the math or who do not account for all of the other costs.

I think I speak for everybody here when I say that we don’t want you to wind up destitute.

@lillycoyote S’okay. I am a bit of a megalomaniac myself :P

@jerv I figure that any car I buy will cost me about $1,000 in the end [etc]

I agree with your comments, and it’s great if you can do that with cars. You will save heaps.

For the purposes of this question, though, we’re probably going OT.

However, as @projectilevomit is young (under 20?), these are valid points to consider.

Buying cars for most of us can be very difficult with all the choices we have, and the lure of a bright shiny new car is hard to ignore to the young and unwary (and the not so young, too!).

Due to our age and hers I think our comments are valid so that she might gain from our experience and not have to deal with unfortunate consequences of what might be a somewhat hasty buying decision. I think her parents would agree with us.

Your health, Sir!

@lillycoyote Aw, shucks, Mum! ‘Tweren’t no offence intended. Can I go back to play, now?