Can anyone suggest a way of making car finance payments easier to handle?

bargainbonkers

My boyfriend is 21 and he bought a car on finance almost 2 years ago. He bought his first car previous to this one and was basically conned into believing it was a working, reliable run-around. Turned out it had A LOT of problems and caused us much stress so, feeling a little put off by any car in his cheap price range he decided to choose something more reliable, and more expensive. Now we realise that although this lovely car has done us proud for the time we've had it, we have often found ourselves saying "If only we'd have given another old banger a chance, we wouldn't be in this financial mess now."
What we're wondering is, is there any way we can make these payments cheaper without stretching the payment period out too much, or maybe even get a cheap loan for the settlement figure for the car? We really don't know where to turn and we do have the option of just sticking with the agreement, but it is eating up a huge amount of my boyfriends income each month.

Here are the figures, if it helps:
Outstanding balance: £5468.12
Early settlement figure: £4231.32
Duration: 48 months in total, started on 13/02/08, so now have
about 2 years left come February

The car was about £4000 when we started the agreement, but once the payment period ends we will have payed over 9k in total.
What to doo?!

PNPSUKNET

he would need to way the cost of a loan against what he would pay over the term.

CLAPTON

your figures make no sense

is it a HP agreement?
how much was the loan
did you include PPI?
what are the monthly payments
did you include anything else (e.g. insurance)
where there any payment free periods?
what was the APR
any missed payments

bargainbonkers

your figures make no sense

is it a HP agreement?
how much was the loan
did you include PPI?
what are the monthly payments
did you include anything else (e.g. insurance)
where there any payment free periods?
what was the APR
any missed payments

Not sure if it's HP
Unsure of the loan at start
Not sure what PPI is :huh:
The monthly payments are £205
I didn't include insurance on the figures
No payment free periods
My boyfriend says the APR was around 29%
No missed payments

standupguy

From the figures you give it looks like you have a lot of negative equity?

The settlement is over £4k and the cars worth under £2k?

Your best hope is if the agreement is hp - you need to check it.

You may have paid one half of the hp price - or if not almost - and you could return the car under a voluntary termination and walk away from the negative equity.

You will then have no payments to make and maybe can use this to get a low price car?

If the agreement is a loan then you will not be able to do the above

CLAPTON

at the moment you have 26 payments to make of 205 which is a total of 5330
your setlemetn figure is 4231

so if you can get a loan at an APR of les than 15% APR then it might be worth while (that would give 26 payments of about £190 per month)

or as standupguy says, if it's an HP agreeement (check the paperwork) then once you have paid half the finance you can hand back the car and pay no further payments.. but of course you then have to get a new motor if you need one.

bargainbonkers

I'll take a look at the paperwork as you suggested. So far this sounds promising, cheers! :beer: I have a car that I don't drive much as my boyfriend enjoys driving us about in his, so in reality if it is possible to hand the car back, he could just go on my insurance policy and we can share my car. Seeing as he doesn't need any car to drive to work it seems impractical having two cars! So, he wouldn't need to purchase a new car. :T