Getting Started

Welcome to Easy Does It‘s car buying guide.

More car buying tips than you can shake a stick at!

Did you know that the average car buyer often spends  $1500-2000 more than they need to buying a new car?

Unless you take advantage of the wealth of car buying tips in this free car buyers guide you will likely join them in overpaying for your next car!

Wouldn’t you rather keep that money in your pocket than hand it over to the car dealer?   I’m sure there are a few things you would rather spend that kind of money on than giving it away when you don’t need to.

Be an informed buyer and don’t get taken for a ride while you’re buying your new ride

Following our step-by-step process in this car buying guide will help you:

• Calculate the best deal available in your area for the vehicle of your choice

• Check your credit and arrange financing so that you’re not at the dealers mercy, even if you choose to get a loan from them in the end.

• Negotiate a killer deal

• Avoid spending uneccessary money on overpriced add-ons

• Take delivery and drive off in your new car feeling happy with your car and confident you got a great deal.

Remember to relax and take your time in this process.  The only one who’s really in a hurry is the dealer, who wants to sell you the car TODAY.  Don’t buy on his time-line, buy on yours and you’ll have a much better chance of knowing you got the best deal possible. With that said:

Get started with the  full car buying guide

Or for those of you wanting just the basic information:

Check out our Time-Saving Quick Car Buying Guide:

Don’t forget to check out our  Essential Car Buying Tips for some of the most important “Do’s” and “Dont’s” in the purchasing process.

Tip of the week:

Car dealership tactic #17: The high pencil.

There are many little tricks car dealers will pull when you sit down
to negotiate price.  The purpose of all of these are to push you
towards agreeing to a deal that works great for them and not so great
for you.

One of their favorites is called a “high pencil” or “first pencil.”
The way this works is that the first offer from the dealership will
purposely be extremely high (its called a ‘pencil’ as it is highly
negotiable i.e. can be erased to negotiate a lower price).   This is
for shock value so that their subsequent offers will seem reasonable
in comparison (there isn’t really a way to prevent this tactic but by
being aware of it you won’t be taken by surprise and you’ll know the
high numbers are just for show)
.
This trick also illustrates one of the many reasons why you should be
sure to negotiate on the price of the car and not on the payment.

If you are negotiating on a payment at this point you probably will
have no idea of how far above reasonable their offer really is.
They’ll quote you a down payment and a monthly payment but unless
you’ve worked these out yourself ahead of time you won’t likely know
how they compare to what you really should be putting down and paying
per month.

If you are negotiating just on the price of the car, that keeps the
negotiation simple.  You can talk about downpayment, figure out what
kind of interest rate you’re getting and determine what payment that
will come out to later.

The fewer variables the dealer has to manipulate the sillier a ‘high
pencil’ looks because there’s nothing they can toss out to justify it
so keep your negotiating focused and you may not even be subjected to
it!