Amortization schedules for Car Payments

[BOSSHOG]

How many of you received an amortization schedule from whichever company gave you a car loan? I think it should be mandatory and would appreciate your feedback for possible communication with my congressman. I asked for an amortization schedule when we got our car loan and I'm glad I did.

[NMDemDist2]

1. why are you glad? the interest payments go down as the principle payments go up

how do you find it helpful?

although I will admit studying my mortgage amortization

[BOSSHOG]

2. I'm rather

anal when it comes to money management. I track every payment and record every check separately. We got a loan from a bank (I got the amortization from them but had to ask for it.) The bank was purchased by another bank. I was two months ahead in my payments and skipped a month. The new bank then said I was one month behind in payments. The statement they provided me showed a balance due the same as the amortization schedule listed for the same date as their statement. If I had not had the amortization the new bank would have gotten away with sticking it to the new customer. I swear it is by plan. I provided a list of every check, the amortization schedule and their latest statement. I think I pissed em off. If every lender had an amortization list and tracked it every month they could keep track of their debt load and hopefully not be screwed by a lender.

[ThomWV]

14. Actually that is not how car financing works. You pay the full interest on all payments

You see, its not simple interest that is applied for car loans. With a car loan you pay the full interest on the total amount borrowed on every payment. With your home you started out paying just about everything into interest and nothing into equity but with every payment the ratio changed slightly so that over time more of your payment was applied to equity and the interest due was applied to the remaining balance on the loan.

With a car loan it works like this - and it is so simple a child can figure out how much payments will be.

Take the amount to be borrowed, multiply it by the interest rate. Take the resulting number and multiply it times the number of years of the loan. That will give you the total amount to be repaid, so you now divide that number by the number of months of the loan to get the payment. So what you are doing is paying interest on every dime borrowed from the first payment until the last.

Sort of makes you sick, doesn't it?

[tcfrogs]

3. I don't think it should be mandatory

It's relatively simple to create your own in an excel spreadsheet.

[BOSSHOG]

4. Question

Are you suggesting keeping track of your own schedule on a month by month basis figuring principle, interest and balance or creating the whole schedule to the last payment? I appreciate your feedback.

[tcfrogs]

5. You can create the whole schedule

With interest/principal/total payment/balance with some simple formulas. Well, simple to those who are good at using Excel. :)

[BOSSHOG]

7. I certainly appreciate that

but how could it be a burden on a lending institution to provide that to a consumer? I emailed the bank, made my request and had it emailed back the next day. If banks (lending institutions) knew that customers were aware of what the balance was in any given month, they might not choose to fuck with people and I think fucking with people is part of their modus operandi. Get ahead in your payments, then skip a month, don't have an amortization schedule and they will pounce like wolves.

[tcfrogs]

8. Don't most people get a payment booklet

That shows when payments are due?

It certainly wouldn't be that big of a burden for the institutions to provide a schedule. I'm just saying that a responsible consumer will keep close eye on that information in the first place.

[BOSSHOG]

9. My point

exactly. I keep an incredibly close eye on every penney we spend, thus I was able to cross swords with the big bad bank. The original bank gave a coupon book which stated date due and amount due but did not indicate balance of loan, which was my biggest sword, and I only had that through an amortization schedule which I had to ask for. Although if a borrower does not keep track of their expenditures it wouldn't matter. Thanks very much for your feedback. It is very helpful.

[tcfrogs]

10. Happy to give you feedback n/t

[high density]

12. You can make one online very easily

http://www.timevalue.com/Tools.aspx

Look at the "How long will it take to pay off my loan?" calculator and check the "show payment schedule" box.

As for looking up the current loan balance, many lenders display a "10 day payoff" amount on their online banking interfaces.

[BOSSHOG]

13. We were

two months ahead on our payments. I thought, what the hell, skip a payment and be just one month ahead, the bank (which will remain nameless except to my congressman) said aha you are a month behind on your payment, and (per my interpreation) they told me fuck you, fuck your payment, fuck your proof. the same thing happened five years ago when we were three months ahead on our mortgage payment and the mortgage was sold to another, then the nasty phone calls began when checks could not be tracked. It took six months to unsnafu that fuckup. I have a hard time thinking that I should be a good borrower. Ergo my original post where I think a borrower should have an amortization schedule on any loan from day one to keep track of their BALANCE DUE on any given day and I believe lenders would be happy to provide it; if not they should be forced to provide it, software alternatives be damned; since if a lender provided the schedule they could not possibly dispute its veracity. Thanks very much for your input.

[Crabby Appleton]

11. Speaking of Excel

Excel 2007 flunks some math problems
Microsoft confirms spreadsheet returns 100,000 when it should show 65,535

Article here

[Somawas]

6. And there's a lot of freeware/shareware

that will run the calculations.