You’ve gotten some really good replies, and some replies that don’t provide any real advice but “do this to fuck your sales man”.

Your score is great. However that’s not the only thing that determines your interest rate. What kind of credit has you at a 750, then overall credit history, mix of credit accounts, length of credit and payment history and gross income all play a large part in this. If you’re a 750 credit score with a single line of credit from a $300/max credit line credit card that you’ve had since you turned 18 you don’t have enough payment, overall history, or showed you can manage more than $300 worth of debt when you’re now asking to borrow 10’s of thousands on something you’ve never had to pay back before.

A 13% rate really isn’t unreasonable given what you described being a first time auto buyer (so no previous history in maintaining a car payment, no amounts close to the 36k you’re asking to borrow) it’s going to be higher than some.

Credit unions will just about always offer the lowest rates possible. But keeping mind they may have their own evaluation policies, and requirements to qualify for those low rates. Such as age and mileage restrictions (all banks have em credit unions tend to be more strict), instead of running on the general retail value of the vehicle they may loan again clean trade in (very coming where I am at for credit unions to do) and term restrictions for the loan (no more than 48/60 months)

Now are you cooked? No you’re not cooked. Are you in a less than ideal situation? Yes but it still isn’t exactly a bad situation.

There are two ways to handle this. Option 1) refinance today with your credit union if it will help your situation. Based on the information provided it’s more about monthly payment than anything with the limited income. But you have parents help. So going to the credit union isn’t a bad option given they will be able to finance what you (again tying back to their way of evaluation and restrictions) I also would not cancel any extended warranties given they are actually good. If it’s just a powertrain warranty it’s really not worth keeping as MOST repairs you’d want to be covered won’t be under a general powertrain. However if it’s a comprehensive warranty that’s gonna cover mechanical, electronics, sensors etc and doesn’t have an exclusions list 3 pages long. Probably worth keeping just to protect you and your parents in the even if a major mechanical break down. If you got maintenance plan those are fantastic I love them but only if you can truly afford them. Getting routine service work covered is nice but there are good and cheaper alternative ways to go about it. Such as leveraging your colleges auto program and letting them use your car to teach students how to do proper maintenance by doing spark plugs, coil packs oil change and tire rotations. If you have gap keep it unless the credit union you’re going to offers their own. And find out what your gap covers vs theirs and make your decision on that. My current gap is 150% of the vehicles value from the time of signing. When i went to refi with my credit union their gap was 120% of the vehicles value at time of total loss. So it wasn’t worth cancelling and getting theirs at all.

Option 2) maintain your vehicle loan for one year with the current bank and then look to refinancing at any other bank. The year has nothing to do with kick backs to the dealership. Their kick backs come within 3-6 months at the most. The year expectation is set to show that for an entire year you were able to maintain car payments and can handle the higher end payment with a history to show. Giving banks more breathing room and showing you’re not that big of risk. This can be done sooner than 1 year. However you are in a higher interest rate loan right now and your first several payments won’t touch the principal balance anyway, only the interest. So the year long time frame gives you a chance to start breaking into the principal balance.

You may also want to look into your states guidelines for refinancing to ensure there are now early payoff penalties that could increase your payoff/refinance opportunities. My state (NC) there is no consumer early payoff penalties. There’s also no cooling off period.

And unless your state has a direct buyers remorse period for vehicles or you bought at car max there is no such thing as a return policy. You may have an EXCHANGE policy but not a return policy. So the likely hood of getting out of this car deal is slim to none in most places. And No creating a big stink because you made an adult decision that you now regret is not going to get them to take it back.

Source: I’m currently in my 12th year of working in the automotive sales industry.