anyone got any opinion / facts or whether the recent drop in interest rates might filter thought to car finance ?I havent signed the finance deal yet and am wodering if the arrival of a new quater in jan might result in rates being revised ?

anyone got any opinion / facts or whether the recent drop in interest rates might filter thought to car finance ?I havent signed the finance deal yet and am wodering if the arrival of a new quater in jan might result in rates being revised ?

No harm in asking but I wouldn't hold your breathe. Personal loans, credit cards and the like are not falling.

With falling car prices impacting many GFV deals any finance houses with that product will find it difficult to lower other lending rates, and after all, the loan rate needs to reflect the risk of bad debt (which presumably is higher at the moment if people can't afford their mortgages). On HP with falling prices I'd see higher deposits being required to ensure the HP company isn't in negative equity. That could all be BS if they require to match market rates however....

i guess i am thinking that the rates i pay on my mortgage have come down and the interest i receive on my savings has fallen so it woudl be reasonable to assume the cost of borrowing has come down...i can live in hope i guess !!

Not sure where your getting your finance from but Alliance & Leicester (I bank with them) just offered me a very good deal on a personal loan, might be worth a look at their website.

thanks. i always use A&L for previous car loans and found them to offer the best rates. i havent looked yet this time as i was going to use skoda finance and fix a final value. A&L used to offer a "car loan" scheme which was essentially a PCP with a final balloon payment but they have stopped this. i will take a look and compare with skoda finance.

What you will find is that the rates may drop.... but not for everyone. Now banks have gone back to the correct way of lending.... people who don't really need a loan and are low risk get a cheap rate... where as higher risk people get a higher rate.

Your best bet would have been to beat up Skoda finance at the time of placing the order as it would have been in their interests to give the best rate possible to shift the car. Going back to them now would be worth a try but not necessarily that rewarding.

Has your motgage dropped? Mines now at 4.1 % variable, cheapest money around. I've always had a flexible mortgage so can increase whenever I want without an arrangement fee, re-valuation, etc. Likewise as in recent times been knocking chunks off it going into the recession to be best placed to see it through.

Thats the biggest misconcenption about flexible mortages. It is not the cheapest way to get a loan when the apr is low. Just add up how much interest you'll pay on any extra you borrow......

Thats the biggest misconcenption about flexible mortages. It is not the cheapest way to get a loan when the apr is low. Just add up how much interest you'll pay on any extra you borrow......

depends on the term .we have a tracker and the rate has just dropped to less than 3%

we are on a short term deal -3 yrs i think. i could borrow extra for 3yrs and get it at a silly interest rate and then pay it off in 3 yrs when i re-evaluate our deal.

Yes if you paid of after the 3 years. But lets be honest how many people do ? I know my sister doesn't. She extended her mortgage to pay for a car as she saw the mortgage APR as the cheap way to borrow..... until a year later when she mentioned it to me and I sat her down and showed her the amount of interest she would pay on the extra £8K over the term of her mortgage.

We are just remortagageing at the mo, most good quotes we are getting works out at something like, for every £1 you borrow you end up paying £1.60 back over our remaining 18 years :eek:

Makes you think when you see it like that.

Thats the biggest misconcenption about flexible mortages. It is not the cheapest way to get a loan when the apr is low. Just add up how much interest you'll pay on any extra you borrow......

Depends on whether you're money savvy or not. If you let it ride for 25 years then of course you'll pay more. If you ensure you pay off the mortgage with the extra it would have been for the car finance each month over a 3 year period, then you'll pay a lot less.

It's all about discipline. I've always been a rate tart. Now that the mortgage is reasonable again, I'll shift the other £50k off credit cards at fixed rates of approx 4.9 -5.5% back onto the mortgage.When it moves the other way then 0% interest free periods with a max 3% transfer fee will be back on again in 9-12 months time when they get desparate to start lending sensibly again.

You need discipline, but you can save a veritable fortune if you play the game correctly.

Of course, it is very much that if you have money/assets, got a good credit rating, you can still borrow at the right rates. If you haven't then you're stuffed.

By my calcuations to date, I've already saved more than £75k of total accumulated interest that would have been payable over the whole term if I was just making the normal monthly payments. So I'm not complaining.