;)
It’s not the zombie at your door that’s sending chills up your spine. It’s your auto loan payment.
As dusk settles on your neighborhood, a shrill wail shatters the evening’s peace. Goosebumps rise along your arms as you hurry your way inside, closing and locking your door behind you. But as you draw the curtains in hopes of avoiding the monster that lurks through your neighborhood, you realize it’s no banshee at all.
The shriek belongs to one of your neighbors, who runs down the street in a frenzy while clutching a crumpled piece of paper. After hurrying outside to console and calm her, you glance at the letter to see exactly what frightened her to the point of madness.
A cursory look at the letter — an auto loan bill — curdles your blood. You feel like screaming too, but bite back the urge. Your gut twists and churns as you glance at the bill once more, terror rising as you empathize with your friend.
You try to wrap your head around such horrific and ghastly numbers. You had always been told that such high interest rates and monthly loan payments didn’t exist. Such financial bogeymen were meant to frighten borrowers away from bad auto loans, but they were all too real.
High interest rates and monthly loan payments are enough to make anyone shriek and scream. This Halloween season, we’re sharing creative auto loan horror stories with you based on real loans we’ve financed.
We’ve changed the identities of the customers that inspired the stories below to protect their personal information and to be more fitting for Halloween. Though there were far fewer ghosts, ghouls, and goblins in the real-life versions of these stories, the data and situations are authentic and genuine. Reader beware.
Cindy Skelly began working as a barista at her local Zombiebucks to pay her way through college, greeting every new customer with a cheerful, bone-white smile while crafting artful coffees and lattes high in sugar and brain matter.
After a few months of hard work and saving tips between hours of poring over the latest spellbooks and tomes, Cindy finally decided to buy a used car.
She walked with an extra rattle in her step as she visited a dealership referred to her by a friend. An hour later, Cindy sat across from the sales manager to finance a $10,000 used car. Giddy over buying her first vehicle, Cindy happily scribbled her name across her sales contract, finalizing the loan.
However, Cindy’s happiness soon turned to dread. Like many others, Cindy carried some credit card debt — it wasn’t cheap to keep her skeletal frame in good shape and stop her joints from creaking. As a young skeletal student, she also didn’t have a significant credit history, maintaining a credit score of 571.
In addition, Cindy didn’t shop around for the best rates. This resulted in a bone-chilling car payment of $654 per month.
But what really unhinged Cindy’s jaw was her loan’s interest rate of 34.43%. This meant, on a loan with a principal balance of $10,000, she’d pay an additional (and horrifying) $3,354.21 in interest.
Fortunately, Cindy wasn’t without options. After refinancing her car loan with RateGenius, Cindy’s interest rate dropped to a much less terrifying 10.47%. Additionally, her monthly payment dropped to $439.73, saving her $214.27 per month and driving a stake into the monster that was her original loan.
After refinancing her car loan with RateGenius, Cindy’s interest rate dropped to a much less terrifying 10.47%.
Benny Dracul works as a hotel critic, traveling the world to review the best locations for his fellow creatures to haunt, terrorize, or sample a delectable variety of fresh blood. As a vampire, Benny could transform into a bat to travel wherever he was headed. Though it was an eco-friendly option, the transformation wasn’t always feasible — exposure to sunlight hurt, after all.
This meant Benny needed a reliable vehicle to travel between the most haunted locations in America. After putting on his best velvet cloak with the absolute highest of collars, Benny started looking for new cars.
Armed with his down payment, sharpened fangs, and a credit score of 682, Benny eventually found a car that met his needs. A few short hours later, Benny drove off with a new set of wheels with a loan-to-value of 43.38% — perfect if he decided to trade the vehicle in at a later date or ended up getting into an accident.
What wasn’t perfect was his loan’s interest rate. At 30.65%, a large portion of Benny’s $494 per month payment went toward interest and not the principal loan balance. The thought tortured him as he drove across the country from haunt to haunt, driving him nearly mad.
On one dark and stormy night, Benny decided to cast his loan aside. He applied for refinancing with RateGenius. Refinancing dropped his interest rate from a horrific 30.65% to 3.99% — a whopping 26.66% reduction. Benny also saved a heap on his monthly car loan payment, reducing it by $214.10 to $279.90, letting him splurge on room service a little more often.
So impressive were the results that he felt his cold, lifeless heart start to beat once more, something it hadn’t done for centuries.
Refinancing dropped his interest rate from a horrific 30.65% to 3.99% — a whopping 26.66% reduction.
As head of HR for the afterlife, Morrigan Moriarty was responsible for making sure everyone suffered equally. It was a job she enjoyed, interacting with a diverse range of dead and undead denizens as they kept the mechanisms of death functioning.
To celebrate her tenth year in the role, Morrigan opted to trade in her worn broom for a brand new car. She eagerly purchased a sports car with a red trim that matched the color of the ever-burning flames of her home. To Morrigan, it was perfect.
Morrigan’s strong payment history and respectable credit score of 756 meant her loan carried a reasonable interest rate of 6.49%. Despite that, the cost of a brand new car meant Morrigan had to fork over a monthly loan payment of $1,853 per month.
Such a nightmarishly high payment meant Morrigan had little money left over to fund her potion- and poison-brewing hobby. The stress took a toll on her too: unsightly warts popped up on her nose and along her smile lines. Worse, no spell or incantation could clear them up.
In a desperate search for relief, she learned of RateGenius and the seemingly magical power of refinancing. Soon after her refinance application was approved, Morrigan rejoiced. Not only did refinancing reduce her interest rate to 3.74%, but her monthly payment fell to a much less wicked $871.40, a savings of $981.60.
Refinancing helped Morrigan keep her spiffy new ride and use a broom for its intended purpose — and not for flying around cackling, cursing, and hexing (the car worked just fine for that, she discovered).
Not only did refinancing reduce her interest rate to 3.74%, but her monthly payment fell to a much less wicked $871.40, a savings of $981.60.
You don’t need to be a ghoul to feel ghoulish about your auto loan. Whether you’re a victim of a predatory (or vampiric) lender or you’ve worked feverishly to improve your credit score, refinancing helps you replace a frightening auto loan with one that’s a little less bone-chilling.
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