What is a Credit Score?

If you've ever signed up for a credit card or tried to make a major purchase like a new car or a house, your credit score was probably taken into consideration. Your credit score is how lenders decide whether or not they can rely on you to make your payments, and it's determined by your credit history.

Credit History

Credit history is made up of a number of factors. The biggest is payment history. If you have utility bills, mortgage payments, or credit cards, are you up-to-date on those payments? Do you always make them on time? If so, it has a big positive impact on your score.

Credit history is also determined by how much debt you have, including credit card debt and loans. The more debt you have, the harder it will be to qualify for loans. The length of your credit history is a factor, so younger people are at a slight disadvantage. If you've only been building credit for a year, your score will be lower than it will ten years from now if you keep the same payment habits.

The two smallest factors are how many lines of credit you've recently opened and whether you have a mix of credit types, like having bills, a car payment, and a credit card, rather than just several credit cards or a mortgage and nothing else in your name. Many credit inquiries in a short space of time will negatively impact your score.

What is a good score?

Credit scores are on a scale from 300 to 850 and are broken up into five categories: Bad (below 600), Poor (600-649), Fair (650-699), Good (700-749), and Excellent (750 or above). Even people with bad and poor credit can qualify for some loans, but the better your score the more chance you have of getting good interest rates and longer loan terms.

Purchasing or Leasing Your New Honda at Lee's Summit Honda

Purchasing a new vehicle can be intimidating because of the potential options for financing your vehicle. We at Lee's Summit Honda like to make this process as easy as possible for you. Getting a new vehicle should be exciting, and having to deal with a lot of financial technicalities can take the joy out of it. The two options Blue Springs drivers have for financing a new vehicle is purchasing or leasing.

Purchasing a Vehicle

Purchasing a vehicle means that you are now the sole owner of the vehicle. There are two different ways that one can go about purchasing a vehicle, whether that's a new Honda or one of our used models. The first is to apply for a car loan. Getting a car loan is very common since they're so expensive, and there are not too many people that can afford to put that much cash towards a vehicle purchase. Once you get the loan, you will then make monthly payments to the lender until the loan is paid off, usually in five to six years.

The other option is to pay for the vehicle entirely with your money. If you are fortunate enough to have the cash for that, then you will make a onetime payment to us. Then you'll have no other car payment responsibilities around Kansas City beside the usual fuel, service and insurance costs, and you will be the owner of the vehicle.

Leasing a Vehicle

If you are unsure of whether you want a certain vehicle long-term, or you do not want to take a loan out to pay for a vehicle, then you can lease a new Honda model. A lease is an agreement between you and the dealership. This agreement says that you will be renting the car from us for a certain amount of time, allowing you to drive it around Blue Springs and beyond with few restrictions. Over that period you will be making monthly payments which cover the depreciation of that car. Once the agreed upon time is up, you can choose to lease a new vehicle, extend your current lease, buy the vehicle or a variety of other options.

Feel free to contact us at Lee's Summit Honda with any questions or inquiries you have. We will make sure that you get all the answers you need and the great financing you came for.