Knowing exactly how much finance is left on your car can help you to measure your financial health and plan for the future. It can help you decide when to trade in your financed vehicle or sell it. More generally, knowing the remaining figure is key in your journey towards financial awareness. Your first port of call will usually be your provider but there are a number of other ways to find this information.
Let’s take a look at some of these, including financial calculators, credit reports or using a HPI report.
A really easy way of checking the remaining finance on your vehicle is to use one of the many loan calculators available online. They can do the hard work for you. While you’ll still need certain information to hand, it’s pretty straightforward.
There is no shortage of these calculators but like a lot of these online resources some are better than others. Firstly, a reminder of what information you’ll need to input into a calculator, so you can make sure you have it to hand:
Original loan amount borrowed
The term of the loan
Annual interest rate of the loan
The monthly payment amount.
Best loan calculators
We’ve had a look at some of the best loan calculators out there. You can find them below.
Personal Loan Calculator – Work Out Your Repayments – MSE (moneysavingexpert.com)
You can and should check how much finance is remaining on your vehicle on your credit report. This is where lenders will go to first to get a snapshot of your outstanding finance. If there are any errors you can resolve them with the individual finance provider, making sure your credit file is as accurate as possible.
How to get your credit report and what to look for
You can check your credit report using one of the credit reference agencies (CRAs).
The three main CRAs used by lenders are:
Equifax
Experian
TransUnion.
You can usually access your report for free or on a trial basis. You can also subscribe which is a great way to get access to your full report whenever you need it.
For more information around credit scores, you can check out our guide Credit Scores | Oodle Car Finance.
Another way of checking how much finance is left on your car is to use the HPI check service. HPI is a comprehensive vehicle history check and will let you know if the car has any outstanding finance on it.
You can get an HPI check online from the official HPI check website. Many other companies offer comprehensive car checks, but you can only get the official HPI check from www.hpi.co.uk.
If you’d like to find out a bit more about HPI checks, read our guide.
If you have HP or PCP finance against the vehicle, then the car is still the property of the finance company and therefore you can’t sell it until the balance of your agreement is paid. You can usually settle the loan early if you wish to sell it before the contract ends.
If you have a personal loan, then the vehicle is not secured against the loan so you are entitled to sell it. You just need to keep paying the bank until you complete the loan.
So, what are you waiting for?
There are a number of quick and easy ways to find out the finance remaining on your car. The simplest method is to give your provider a call but there are plenty of other ways to work out this figure.
Use an online calculator using your loan details.
Use your credit report which will have details of how many payments made and what’s left to pay.
You can generate an HPI report using your registration – it won’t list things like your option to purchase fee or missed payments which will need to be paid, but it’s a good way to get a general figure.
Now you have a really good understanding of the different ways to access that detail, you’re in a good position to make informed decisions.
