The 5 WORST Moves You Could Ever Make at a Car Dealership

Here are the five worst moves you could ever make at a car dealership. I'm Tyler. I'm a former financial advisor and portfolio manager, and now I make financial content for free so you don't have to pay for it. Number one: Showing up in person. Never do this. Email three dealers within 100 miles of you. Tell each one by name that the others are competing for your business, and you look forward to seeing who earns it. Walking onto a lot is volunteering to spend four hours getting worn down by a guy named Chad who's done this 6,000 times more than you have. No. 2. Talking monthly payments. Fastest way to get screwed. They can hit your monthly target every time. How? By stretching the loan to 84 months, by marking up the residual, or by burying $4,000 of add ons inside of it. Negotiate the out the door price, cause that is the only number that matters. No. 3. Letting them merge the deal. At a dealership, you have three separate negotiations. The car's price, your trade in, and the financing. Negotiate them in that order, one at a time. Merge them, and they'll shift money around until the trade looks generous, the price looks fair, and you've officially lost the car buying game. No. 4. Saying yes to anything in the finance room. Extended warranties, gap insurance, paint Protection, nitrogen filled tires, or VIN etching. None of it's mandatory and all of it's marked up 200 to 400%. No. 5. Starting your negotiations without pre approved financing. This is a big one. Dealer financing is where most dealerships make the majority of their profit on a sale. Take the bank's rate, mark it up two or three points, and pocket the spread. So show up pre approved from your credit union and you've removed their most profitable lever in one move down. A $35,000, six year loan, one rate point could be roughly $1200. Do all five. Save thousands. Never deal with Chad again. And if any of this is helpful, sign up for my free weekly newsletter by clicking the link in my bio. Each week I'll send you over another money playbook that actually works.