Worry! about my car and credit!?

Question

I cant afford my car no more I still owe allot of money on it, how can i get rid of da car without loosing my credit? can i sell it to a dealer or to another person? I dont want to give it back to the bank because I will have bad credit for a long time any info will help

p.s please no smart remarks this is serious

Answer 1

You sell it.  That may involve coming up with cash at the sale if you owe more than you can sell for.

Answer 2

If the loan is fairly new, you probably will not get what you owe on it, but to save your credit and cut your losses, try cleaning it up real good and then selling it to an individual for cash.  If they want a loan for it, then ask them to get a car loan from their bank.  A dealer will not give you as much for it as an individual would because the dealer will want to mark it up with his costs and profit to what another person is willing to pay for it.

Then if you owe on your car more than you received for it, you have to figure out how to pay the balance.  One good way, is to calculate how many payments you will get from selling the car.  Then mail in a check with as many even payments as you can make, along with the coupons.  Then as you save enough money for another payment by not having to pay for gas, insurance, repairs, registration, inspections, and tickets, then you send in another payment with another payment coupon.  As an example, if you owed 12 payments of $350 but could only sell the car for $3200, then you can only afford to pay the next 9 payments.  So send in the coupons and a check for the next 9 payments, which in this case is $3150, and save $50 toward your next payment.  If you were on a month to month insurance policy, you probably will not get a refund by cancelling it.  But if you could save money by riding a bicycle, taking buses, and occasionally paying friends for rides, it might take you two months to save up for your next car payment, but you will not be late because you already made the payments for September through May, which saved your credit and saved on interest because you will not be late by making next June's payment this October.  When you make your final payment, you will probably owe a whole lot less than what the coupon states because of the interest you saved by paying off so much so early.  

This is better than holding the money to make each payment on time, because you might be inclined to blow some of it and you probably will not earn as much interest on it as you are paying on the car loan.

This is also better than just paying the whole amount of the car with your next payment because if you are late with the next payment, you will owe a late fee and they will recalculate more interest to be added to your final payment even though you paid off most of the principal early.

Answer 3

Auto finance is what I do for a living and the best way out of this is to sell the car yourself and take out a personal loan for any remaining monies due and pay off the bank.

This way you keep your credit.

The only other way is to find someone to take over the payments. If you go this route make sure they pay you so you can make sure that the payments are made on time and you both will have to be listed on the insurance.

Any other course and your facing destroyed credit for the next 7 years.

Answer 4

You would get more money from a private person than if you sold it to a dealer. Check out http://www.kbb.com/ to find an estimate on what you could sell it for.  Hopefully you can get enough to pay off the loan. Otherwise you would have to come up with the difference.