Do I Need AWD or 4WD for the Winter?

It is important to maintain a good credit score. A high credit score gets you access to the lowest financing rates, meaning that you will pay less in interest when you borrow money to finance the purchase of something like a car or home. Additionally, many employers (and even some landlords) pull credit checks on applicants to determine if a prospective employee or renter pays his or her bills on time. But sometimes, life events happen that can lower your credit score. Maybe you lost your job for a time, maybe the mortgage crisis struck too close (literally) to home, or maybe you just fell behind on a few payments due to an emergency or medical crisis. If these things happened to you then your credit score almost certainly a hit. If you are looking to rebuild your credit, a car loan is an excellent way to do so. The standard unit of determining credit worthiness is called a FICO score, which is named after Fair Isaacs and Company, the firm that pioneered this scoring process. Your credit score changes over time, and moves up and down based on factors such as opening up new lines of credit, paying off older accounts, and so forth. According to Fair Isaacs and Company's website, a FICO score is based on 5 factors with different weighting: payment history (35%), amounts owed (30%), length of credit history (15%), new credit (10%), and types of credit used (10%). By examining the criteria that make up a score and their relative weighting, we can infer that a good score will be earned primarily through a history of making payments on time, on accounts that have been open for a long period of time, and with outstanding balance on "good" credit (e.g. car loans and mortgages) rather than on "bad" credit (e.g. credit cards). This shows that taking out a loan to buy a car, and making payments on time will make a good score even better. Moreover, it shows that a car loan can also be a good step towards repairing a credit score that is not as high as you would like. Since payment history is the most heavily weighted category (35% of the total score) and a car loan is also one of the "good" types of credit used, taking out a car loan and making timely payments can begin to repair a credit score quickly.

Leasing a great option for many, many drivers, but not everyone takes advantage of this affordable driving solution. When you lease a car, you are paying to borrow a car for a set amount of time and a given number of miles. Instead of paying for the whole car, you are only paying for the portion that you use (depreciation) and the money rate factor (rent charge). At the end of the lease, you have several options: 1 ) you can drop the keys off and walk away 2) you can buy the car for yourself 3) you can sell the car 4) you can use the car like a trade-in towards another purchase or lease and 5) sometimes, you can extend you lease for another few months. Your monthly lease payment is the sum of the monthly depreciation payment and the rent charge. Depreciation is just the difference between the selling price of the vehicle and the residual value (which you know at the time of the lease), divided by the number of months. So, if the selling price of a hypothetical vehicle is $20,000 and the residual value is $16,400, then the monthly depreciation payment on a 36-month lease is $100. The monthly rent charge would be calculated by adding the residual to the selling price and multiplying that sum by the money rate factor. For example, using a money rate factor of 0.00140, the monthly rent charge would be ($20,000 + $16,400) * 0.00140, which is $50.96. In this example, the total monthly lease payment would be $150.96 every month for 36 months. For the sake of comparison, a 60-month loan at 3% APR on that very same hypothetical car is $359.37 per month People often say that they do not want to lease because they would prefer to own a car. The fact of the matter is that you do not own a car until you make the final payment. In the above example, it is the bank’s car for the first 60 months before you own the car, but you are still responsible for replacing the tires, brakes, etc. as needed. In short, you do not own the car, but you own all the headaches that come with it. In contrast, when you lease a car, you own five great options and never have to worry about being “underwater” when your loan is more than your car is worth. When you lease a new car, you have a new car warranty, and when you lease a Toyota Certified Pre-Owned vehicle, you get one of the strongest certified warranty programs around.

Tires are one of the most important parts of your vehicle since they connect you to the road. Whether you have snow tires for the winter, or you are using all-season tires, it is important to know more about them, and to maintain them properly. Tires should always be properly inflated, have plenty of tread, and be free from signs of damage, weather cracking, or uneven wear. Snow tires are specifically designed to grip the road in cold, icy conditions. Snow tires achieve superior traction through a more aggressive tread pattern and a softer rubber compound. So why have snow tires? Why not just make all tires have better tread and grip? The answer is that the different rubber compounds work better at different temperatures. The softer rubber compound functions best in colder weather (generally below 45 degrees F), and will actually wear more quickly in warmer weather, whereas summer tires are designed to function best in warmer weather. For this reason, it is important to take your snow tires off once warm spring temperatures arrive to help prolong the life of your snow tires. By contrast, all-season tires are made from a harder rubber compound that can handle the warm summer roads, but do not provide as much traction in the ice and snow. Regardless of whether you use snow tires or all season tires, it is important to note that not rotating tires can cause them to wear out more than three times as quickly. Tires that are not rotated can wear unevenly, becoming "chopped." At first, chopped tires will be only a minor nuisance; they will be noisier and less fuel-efficient than tires with even wear. Over time, however, the chop will become so severe that the tires will no longer pass a state safety inspection, even as early as 20,000 miles! Keeping your tires properly inflated and having them rotated every 5,000 miles or so will help them last longer. In fact, keeping your tires properly inflated has the added benefit of improving your fuel economy. As far as rotating your tires, we offer free tire rotations for the life of every tire we sell.