We’ll cover the basic steps to buying a car for you in this article.

Although not all encompassing in this short article, I’ll hopefully give you a basic understanding of, and help you understand how to locate the specific car that you want, and then obtain a price that is fair to you and the dealership.

For our purposes here, I will assume that you have done plenty of research and are comfortable with which car best fits your needs, you budget, and hopefully comes close to satisfying the ‘want’ factor.

If not please stop now and go get your research done on getting the best car deal you can.

Buying a car is obviously a big investment for anyone, so you’ll want to be sure to narrow your search to exacting calculations down to the options and packages you want on your car. If you take the time to get this done up front, I think you’ll turn the car buying process into an exciting and satisfying project, especially when you reap the fruits of your labor with a good car at price within your target range.

One of the big advantages on your side as a potential car buyer is the competitiveness of the new car market today.

And, the car market competition breeds car buyer incentives from the vehicle manufacturers and the car dealers. As with any market, demand will drive supply and price. So, you may find that the cars with the greatest incentives are the ones that may not be selling at such a brisk pace on their own. Of course, the inverse may be true too.

Let’s talk briefly about incentives or the added reasons the automobile industry gives you to purchase their cars.

Most often you’ll see these car buying incentives in the form of either cash back or special financing.

The cash back is the easiest to grasp. If a car is selling for $25,000 and the manufacturer is offering $2,500 cash back the net selling price offered would be $22,500. Easy enough to understand. Now let’s use those same numbers as they would apply to special financing incentives and plug them into a monthly payment calculator.

If you financed the $22,500 at 6% for a loan term of 5 years, your monthly payments would be about $434.99. If the manufacturer was offering this same vehicle price but with a 0% interest rate for the 5 year term of the loan then your monthly payment would be approximately $375.00. That’s a monthly payment savings of $59.99 every month. Over the life of your car loan that adds up to a very substantial savings of $3599.40 for you.

With car incentives it is important to note that they probably won’t apply to all models (probably the most popular models). Also, the car incentives may not be offered in all regions of the country.

Remember earlier we discussed that incentives are mostly driven by the market forces. Furthermore, in order to take advantage of most of these incentives, your credit rating will have to probably be good to excellent.

Also keep in mind there are also ‘hidden’ or unadvertised dealer incentives that are paid directly to the dealer from the manufacturer in order to move certain cars. With a bit of research from a distinctive website such as Edumunds.com, you can ferret out these ‘dealer cash’ incentives and keep the advantage in your court.