Overhaulin'

How to calculate total interest on a car loan?

Can anyone help with this? My current auto loan is at $16,832.54 and if all payments ($349.91) are made on time will be paid off 7/21/13. The current interest rate is 12.65%. If I could get a rate of 6.9% and make the same payment amount, how soon would it be paid off and how much would I save in interest? (This was the type of math problem I was never ever able to do!!!!) Thanks for your help!

Public Comments

1. Wow 12.65% that is rediculous, whoever gave you this loan should be ashamed, you should go back to them and tell them how greedy they are and refute any more business from them and spread the word.. as for your total interest paid.. you would need a financial calculator.. if you have monthly payments until 7/13. that would be 67 months left.. if you have 16,832 left on your loan at an interest rate of 6.9%, your car will be paid off before 7/13.. you will be paying 6.9% of each balance.. but you have made the problem very difficult because of your pay off date.. but you will be paying about 1200 dollars in interst . woah..
2. With your current loan, you'd pay another $6,775 in interest through the life of the loan. If you refinanced at 6.9% making the same payments, you'd end up paying only $2,929 in remaining interest, saving you $3,846 in interest payments, and the loan would be paid off by October 2012. You really need to use a financial calculator (or a spreadsheet with the same functions like Excel) to do the calculations. Hope that helps.