The first thing to do when buying a car is decide just what you can afford. Consider the cost of gas, insurance, and maintanence. You shouldn’t buy a car if you can’t make a 20% down payment and pay it off in 48 months. If you can’t make a 20%  down payment you should wait to buy a car.

It may seem like you could pay for a new car fairly easily, but once you add everything up it could be a little more difficult than you think. Consider buying a slightly used vehicle rather than new. New cars can lose over 20% of their value as soon as they leave the dealership. Don’t buy a car that has a lot of miles or you could end up spending even more money on repairs. Before you buy a used car, take it to a mechanic to see if everything is ok. A mechanic can save you from buying a car that could need costly repairs down the road. Make sure you get a vehicle history report when buying a used vehicle. It will let you know where the car is from and if it has ever been wrecked. Try to negotiate the price of the car to help save some money. Most car dealers will take a few hundred dollars off the price.

Don’t forget to buy auto insurance on your car; it is against the law to drive without it. Get quotes online to compare insurance prices between different companies.

Tags: buying a car, first time, insurance

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under car insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.