What Does the NH Hands Free Law Mean For Me?

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.

Now that we are finally getting some snow this winter, I'm sure a lot of you noticed how bad the roads were in New Hampshire today. There is nothing like a fresh pile of wet, heavy snow to make to think twice about the vehicle you are driving and how safe your tires are. So what exactly does drivetrain have to do with how a vehicle handles in the snow and ice? It helps to know a little bit about drivetrains; they transfer the power from the motor to the wheels to make a vehicle move. There are 3 different types of drivetrain to consider. The oldest is rear-wheel drive (RWD). RWD vehicles transfer the power from the motor to the rear wheels, which "push" the car forward. The front wheels do not deliver power, they are just used for balance and steering. The advantage of RWD cars is that they have excellent "balance" and control. They excel at hugging curves, and deliver a driving experience that tends to be more "fun" than some of their counterparts. It is for this reason that most sports cars are rear-wheel drive. About 30 or 40 years ago, there was a sudden interest in a bold new design: the front-wheel drive vehicle. As the name implies, front-wheel drive (FWD) vehicles transfer power to the front wheels which "pull" the car forward. There are a few advantages that the FWD vehicles have over RWD vehicles. The first advantage is that by eliminating the need for a driveshaft running from the engine block to the rear axle, the car becomes simultaneously lighter and more spacious. And a lighter car is a more fuel-efficient car, so the FWD vehicles are more practical from a fuel economy perspective. The improvement in fuel economy was a primary driver in widespread adoption of the FWD platform, especially after the OPEC embargo of 1973-74 and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards enacted by Congress in 1975. Finally, FWD vehicles handle much better in wet, slippery road conditions. The reason for the improved handling is that the engine block's weight on the front axle helps push down on the tires to achieve better traction on the road. The third and final category of drivetrains is the 4-wheel drive (4WD) and all-wheel drive segment (AWD). There is a slight distinction between 4WD, which is manually selected by the driver, and AWD, which is controlled by a computer that distributes power where it is needed. But in both cases, all four wheels help propel the vehicle forward. As you can imagine, the 4WD/AWD category combines the traits of both the RWD and FWD cars. It is even better in slippery road conditions than FWD cars, although fuel economy does suffer a bit. For the very best traction and vehicle control in inclement driving conditions, AWD/4WD is the way to go. That being said, you can improve the traction of your FWD or RWD vehicle considerably with the addition of snow tires.