HOW TO BUY A CAR

The best advice for buying a car is do not negotiate in person. Once you start car shopping at a dealership, you will be going head-to-head with a trained car salesman. More importantly, you limit yourself to a car price from a single dealership with no reason for the salesman to give you a competitive offer.

Instead, ask several car dealers for prices and follow these “how to” steps to make them compete with each other to win your business.

Step 1 – Get Internet Price Quotes

Using any of the free websites below, you can enter the make and model car you are shopping for and up to five car dealers will email you with competing prices. Each website has a different network of dealers and you will likely get better results by trying more than one service. I recommend a goal of at least 5-7 quotes from different dealers, but no more than 8-10 to keep the process manageable.

The best time to buy a car is at the end of the month when salesmen are trying to hit their monthly sales targets. Sometimes if a salesman (or the entire dealership) is close to a bonus target, they may be willing to sell cars for big discounts or even at a loss if the bonus is large enough. Email negotiations can take a few days, so plan to start contacting dealers at least 3-4 days from the last day of the month. The next step of this “how to guide” will tell you exactly what to say when you reply to car dealers.

I prefer to start with Edmunds where they allow you to contact up to 5 dealers at once. Most other services will only connect you with 3 or 4 car dealers.

Regardless of which service(s) you use, you may need to enter multiple requests using surrounding zip codes to get all the Internet car price quotes that you need. Try to keep your requests within 50-75 miles, but if you are comfortable driving over an hour to save several hundred dollars, then feel free to expand your range a little further. If you do submit more than one request or use more than one website, make sure you do not send multiple requests to the same dealership. All of these websites will allow you to “uncheck” dealers if you do not want to send a second request to them.

How to Buy a Car at the Best Price – Follow this Advice

Tip#1: Don't talk prices while car shopping in person. Follow these tips for test driving a car to leave the dealership without having to negotiate.
Tip#2: Know when to buy a car – wait until the end of month.
Tip#3: Don't ask just one dealer for prices! Get new car prices from several dealers to get the lowest possible price.