Car Loan After Bankruptcy: Qualifying & Saving Money
By R. Lawrence Anderson -
If you are planning to apply for a car loan after bankruptcy, there are two key items you need to focus on:

1) Increasing your chances of qualifying for a car loan after bankruptcy

2) Reducing the interest rate on the car loan after bankruptcy

Let's look at each item in more detail:

1) Increasing your chances of qualifying for a car loan after bankruptcy

One way to increase your chances of qualifying for a car loan after bankruptcy is to increase your credit score.

How do you increase your credit score? One way is to update your credit reports. This means removing any inaccurate or obsolete negative information from your credit reports. This will take an investment of time on your part - but if it means the difference between qualifying (or not) for a car loan after bankruptcy it can be worth the effort.

Another way to increase your credit score is to add positive items to your credit report - but few people know about this technique. There's not enough room to go into it here, so I'll save that for another article.

In After Bankruptcy Credit Solutions I go into detail on a number of ways you can increase your credit score. While there isn't enough room to cover all of them here, or any of them in detail, hopefully this gives you an idea of some of the steps you can take.

Another way to increase your chance of qualifying for a car loan after bankruptcy is to increase the amount of your down payment, or look at a lower price car.

For example, let's assume you have $1,600 for a down payment on a car and you're looking at a $16,000 car - that's a 10% down payment. But what if the lender won't approve the loan because the down payment isn't large enough? See what they can do if you consider an $8,000 car. Now your $1,600 represents a 20% down payment. In addition, everyting else being equal, the payment on your car loan after bankruptcy would be lower if you finance it for the same period of time.

Next, let's discuss some ways you can reduce the interest rate on a car loan after bankruptcy...

2) Reduce the interest rate on the car loan after bankruptcy

Here's where increasing your credit score pays off again! Why? if you are able to increase your credit score enough to reduce the interest rate you pay on a car loan after bankruptcy,

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