Nick's Cars Blog
Here's where I blog about autos…

Buying a car is a major investment; one way that you can lower the cost is to buy a used car. There are actually quite a few good reasons to buy used, the biggest is the massive depreciation that new cars take as soon as they are driven off the lot. The process of buying a used car is pretty simple but t there are some things to watch out for.

The first thing that you have to do when you are buying a used car is to figure out how much you can afford to spend. This should be fairly easy if you are planning to pay cash for your car, a little bit trickier if you are going to be financing. If you are paying cash you can just look at how much money you have available. If you are planning to finance the car you will need to determine how much you can afford to pay each month and then work out what this works out to as a purchase price, there are plenty of online calculators to help you do this.

The next step in buying a used car is to decide what kind of car you want. You will want to start with a general idea, do you want a sports car or a family car for example and then narrow it down from there. You are going to want to do research on the cars that you are considering. There are lots of places that you can find out which cars are more reliable and what the approximate value should be. One thing to keep in mind at this point is that some cars have a reputation for being highly desirable used cars. In general you will have to pay extra for these so you may be able to get a better deal by going with one of the many perfectly good cars that doesn’t have the same reputation.

The next thing that you are going to have to do if you are going to be borrowing money to pay for the car is to arrange financing (check out SongNB’s site for more financing info!). You can skip this step if you want and just take the financing that is offered by the dealer but you will get a much better rate if you arrange it ahead of time. You want to get preapproved that way you can negotiate on the financing with the dealer and see if he will offer a better rate.

The last step is to actually go out and find a used car to buy. You have several options, you can buy from private seller or from one of the dealers that sells used cars. Both have their advantages and their disadvantages so you will need to decide which is right for you. As with any car make sure that you take a test drive, it is also a good idea to have a mechanic look the car over.