How Your Credit Score Affects the Lease Payment on Your Car

Let’s talk about your car for a minute… the car that you lease.

Many people these days lease their cars, for a number of reasons.  These could include:

• The payment is usually lower
• They may not plan on keeping the car more than 3-4 years
• They like driving a newer car that is under warranty
• They may not drive too many miles so the mileage restriction isn’t an issue

When you purchase a car and get a loan, it’s really easy to figure out your payment.  You take the total amount financed, plug in the interest rate on your loan along with the term (number of years), and you can calculate your payment.  There are tons of online loan calculators you can use.

But when you lease your car, it is much more difficult to determine the payment because there are far more factors that go into it.  This complexity makes it difficult for a lessee to determine the actual interest rate they are being charged.

Rest assured, however, that the interest rate and payment on your lease are HIGHLY dependent upon your credit score.  In fact, according to Bankrate.com, the interest rate on a car purchase or lease for a person with a 750+ credit score could be about half of what a person with a 660 credit score would pay.

Simply put, even if you lease your car(s), your payment will be substantially higher if you have low to average credit scores.

Now, considering the fact that if you are leasing the car, you will ALWAYS have a payment, you could be facing years or even decades of spending far more money on your car than necessary.  And if you’re in a multi-car family, this situation hurts your finances even more.

The good news is that the problem can be fixed.  Several months of credit repair is often enough to get those scores into the top tier and save you a lot of money each and every year on your car payments.  Contact our office for more information and to get your questions answered.