What Happens When You Stop Making Your Auto Payments

People who are about to get late on their car note will probably be wondering to themselves right now -- I wonder what happens when a person stops making their car payments.  And well, if you’re one of them, it’s good to know the following important information.
When you stop making your car payments the first thing that happens is you will start to get a lot of phone calls from numbers that you may not recognize.  Those numbers are from the dealer and the finance company primarily.  They are looking for their payment, and they will be very persistent with you.  Expect calls daily, they mean business.

In addition to getting phone calls all hours of the day,  you can rest assured that the finance company or dealer – whoever financed your vehicle -  will report the late payment(s) to the credit bureaus, and when the credit bureaus catch wind of this event they will start knocking points off of your credit score.  Ouch.

Oh and by the way, the lower your credit score is the higher interest rates you’ll pay on just about everything, a low credit score can make getting out of debt almost impossible, do the math, and you’ll see that that’s the plain truth.  Keeping your car loan on its payment schedule is really extremely important when you get right down to it, important to your financial health.

Of course, you’re also risking a possible repossession of your vehicle when you miss a payment or two, it’s not a nice feeling, wondering if you’ll wake up one day and your car is gone.  If you wait long enough, it will be.  And then where will you be?

Well, you risk the loss of all of your personal items which are in the car because believe you me, it’s their car, not yours, and they are taking everything that’s in it and they won’t stop to give you the courtesy of saying – “hey, are these your $200 sunglasses?”  Rest assured that you have a legal right to the possessions inside but the inconvenience of not having access to certain items like a cell phone or work briefcase will be frustrating.

And when you’re car is gone you’re going to have trouble getting to work, right?  Most of us live a pretty good distance from our jobs these days, making a car a necessary evil.  When you all of a sudden don’t have your car, you’re going to lose income, you’re going to go through a major hassle and you may even lose your job – not a pretty picture.

Last but not least, you may have a lawsuit filed against you in order to recover any outstanding debts after realization of the asset.  That can include your home equity and your bank accounts in certain states and circumstances.  So, when you stop making your car payments a whole lot of bad things can and eventually will happen.  But of course, we all go through financial difficulties now and then, if you miss a payment the best thing to do is to call the dealer or lender and let them know that you’re aware of it and that you’re taking steps to correct the situation.