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Missed a Car Payment? 4 Ways to Never Miss One Again

Posted on November 4, 2022

Having trouble paying off your loan and missed a car payment? It can be difficult, and extremely stressful if you’re stuck in that situation and looking for a helping hand then this is the article you need. We’re going to go over some of the best ways to make sure you can make your loan payment back on time.

 

Make a Budget 

 

If you haven’t already, the first thing you're going to want to do  if you've missed a car payment in the past is set up a budget. A budget is a running sheet of all of your finances that will make everything to do with your loan payments much easier to figure out.

 

 

Open a new excel spreadsheet and track all of your income and expenses over the last month, and add together the totals. When it comes to the expenses try to categorise them in ways that make sense like: food, bills, entertainment, etc.

 

Having this breakdown will show you exactly where you may be spending too much and can save, especially the entertainment bracket where you can easily catch things like subscriptions you don’t use but are still paying for.

 

Increase Your Payments

 

One of the fastest ways to clear a loan (if your lender will allow it) is to increase the size of your monthly contributions. This actually has two benefits, for one the more you pay each month the faster the loan is paid off, but the other benefit is that increasing your monthly payments actually decreases the amount you’ll pay overall, provided your loan charges interest at a monthly rate.

 

Automate Everything 

 

Another great thing you can do if you've missed a car payment in Canada is automate the entire process, this ensures that you can never even be tempted to spend the money that’s supposed to be going towards your loan repayment.

 

Set up an auto payment that automatically sends money towards the loan as soon as you're paid, so that you don’t even see it in your personal spending account, it will be scary at first but eventually the amount minus the loan payment will just become the new normal.

 

Refinance

 

If you got the loan during a bad financial period which has since improved then refinancing could also be a good option. Basically you can renegotiate the loan terms so that the loan can be over a shorter period or with a lower, more manageable interest rate both of which can assist you in paying off the loan faster. 

 

 

If your current lender won’t give you a better deal then you can always take your business elsewhere to someone who will.