Michael Petruccelli says: “What do you mean you can’t afford it? We’ll just lower the monthly payments!”
The usual suspects: Car salesmen, timeshare peddlers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, mattress dealers and other folks who sell big-ticket items on commission.
Reality check: Go ahead and laugh, but lots of people fail to think about the extra financing costs that drive those lower payments. Consider the example of a $10,000 used-car loan with an interest rate of 6%. Sure, spreading out your payments from three to seven years would lower the monthly payments from $304 to $146; but all of the extra interest payments end up boosting the final vehicle price by $1319.
