To clear or not to clear?

Jonesy135

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kbl

Hi, if it was me, I'd pay the car off first, or at least get a huge chunk of the finance out of the way (preferably 5-6 months ahead of payments), then start saving for the surgery. that way if anything happened to threaten your income (illness, job security etc) you wouldn't have to worry about paying off the car

redpete

Jonesy135 wrote: »

I can pay off that finance at anytime i wish as long as i pay it off in full including interest (i.e. £200.82*Months remaining) and as far as i can make out this will not incur an admin or early repayment fee's etc.

Are you sure there's no discount if you pay off early - if not then you are effectively paying a fee, the lender receives the same amount even though you've borrowed money for a shorter period..

Plan A: Continue paying £200.82 for untill Dec 2015 for my car, while saving for Laser and paying for laser out right once i have saved enough.

Plan B: Save and pay off my car then when i have released that £200.86 per month start adding that to my savings and pay for Laser that way?

Both options end up with you having enough to pay for the eye surgery at the same time (if what you say about paying off the loan early is true).

redpete

Jonesy135 wrote: »

If any of the 104 people who have viewed this have any opinion on this then please give me a shout.

Maybe they gave up reading part way the stuff about your eyesight.

Herzlos

If you have to pay all of the interest on the car loan anyway (doesn't sound right?) then there's no benefit at all to paying it off early. You'd be better saving for the laser surgery and then putting the rest into a savings account to earn some interest, whilst having inflation eat at the loan balance.

I'd phone the car loan provider first though and find out exactly what the settlement fee is (it's normally less than £200.82*Months remaining) before deciding though.

andyuk01

Phone the lender and ask for a settlement figure, not the current balance

A lot of the first tier customer service reps either wont know what you mean or will quote the wrong figure

Its highly likely the settlement figure for the loan is going to be less than the outstanding balance (x times your monthly payment)

CLAPTON

what sort of car finance? HP or personal loan?
what was the APR
what do the T&Cs say explicitly about early settlement

what would the APR of the laser treatment be if you paid in instalments?

why can't you use the ISA if this is the most efficient way of doing things?

is the laser treatment more important than saving for a house?

Clive_Woody

Not really answering your question, but I had laser eye surgery last year and the one piece of advice I would give is that you should definitely not pay their list prices, you can get £1000s off by walking away and playing them off against each other (Optimax, Optical Express, etc...).

Go for a consultation, they will quote list prices or maybe offer a small discount. Walk away and tell them that you have appointments booked at other clinics to compare quotes. You will get a call within a couple of weeks with a much better price. Many of them also offer 0% finance deals which might be worth considering.

I also paid for my eye surgery using a cash back credit card (paid in full when the bill came through). Every little helps...:D