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Can you pay off a car loan early without a penalty?

Nicholas Hinrichsen - Published: September 15, 2023

Are you curious if you can payoff a loan early without penalty?

Congratulations - you want to payoff your loan early! Depending on how much you choose to payoff, there may or may not be penalties or benefits. There's two cases worth talking about:

You're paying the entire loan balance off. In these cases

There is rarely a penalty for paying off the entire balance.
Some lenders do suffer losses from an early payoff and so will make the process highly inconvenient, but its rare to have penalties

You're paying only part of the balance or want to make additional principal payments. In these cases

The lender may NOT apply your additional payment to principal only. Instead, lenders may count this as "future payments" and still collect interest from these additional principle amounts
Make sure you CALL the lender and confirm the additional payments go to principal only
If a lender is unable apply payments to principle or partial payments easily, please switch lenders and consider refinancing your car to work with a more accommodating lender

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