What to do?

[grower]

I have a car loan through Citifinancial Auto and I have a 19% interest rate on a 14,000 dollar loan. I had a 640 credit score when i received the loan about 3 months ago. I have since cleared up my deliquenceis on my report and dropped the money I owed from 22,000 to the one car loan and 2 credit cards totalling 13,900. How long should I wait to refinance and should my score go up any.

[JoshJohnson]

Usually it takes about 6 months for you score to go up.

Sometimes re-fis aren't worth it, even with lower interest rates too.

[grower]

How can refinancing my car loan not help? Can you go more in detail My car payments are killing me and Im trying to lower payments and not give the bank 60% of my monthly payments.

[anchorbob]

Sometimes you pay more for the total term of the loan, even though the interest rate is lower. Just use a calculator and see if it works out. But if you need to lower your monthly payments, then by all means do it.

[Shel]

It is all based on your credit score. You might have cleaned up the old info, but did it increase your score? It only makes sense to refi if your score is higher. Keep in mind however, when you refi an Auto Loan, the lender still gets paid all the interest. So refi-ing may lower your payments, but it doesn’t help you in the long run or increase your credit score.

Remember, we are nothing but a credit score in today’s world and we need to learn how to leverage the system for our benefit!

Sheldon Owen