Finding the Best Incentive Deals
by: Tom Tessin

The next time you go looking for your next automobile, make sure that you’re aware of the word, “incentive”.  An incentive is a little deal that the car dealer will offer in order to get you through the door or to make that final decision and purchase the car.  An incentive example might be, “get $5,000 cash back when you purchase the so and so automobile”

How do you find a new car incentive you might ask?

I’m going to show you a few different ways you can find the best incentive deal in the town so that the next time you make your purchase; you’ll be able to get the most for your buck.  Experts generally say the best time to get the best car incentives is when the economy is in a down time and people have very few dollars to spend.

Check your local newspaper

The place where you can do your own searching and make up your mind on what dealer to go to is usually found in your local newspaper.  Car dealerships usually have a pretty big budget when it comes down to advertising their cars on their lot.  When you spot a car ad, simply glance and see what kind of incentives they are offering for that week, month, etc.  A nice way to keep track of the ads is to cut the ad out and throw it in a folder.

The reason you’ll want to keep this folder is so that when you go on your hunt, you can present these offers to other dealerships.  This way, you’ll have physical evidence and you can see if the dealership will match the same incentive based offer.  A lot of the times, you’ll find that they will.

Go on the internet

In today’s technological era, everyone has a website and you can bet that you local dealer has a website with all the fancy deals and what cars they have available on the lot.  When you hop on their website, check and see what kind of incentives they have going.  Once again, you’ll want to save these papers and throw them in your “incentive” folder.

Pay attention to the radio and TV

If you pay attention to commercials, you probably noticed that a majority of them are related to cars.  If you never really pay attention, make sure that you make note of the next few commercials that are auto related and see if they have an incentive offer going on.  You’ll find that most of the times, they will note this because obviously, in the long run, they want to get you through the door.  If you can remember the radio ad/TV ad, this will help you with your research down the road.

No matter how bad the economy is or how good the auto market is, you’ll always be able to find some pretty good deals when it comes to incentives.  Just make sure you always do your research and that you ask other dealers to match other offers.  You’ll be surprised at what you can bargain!