Voluntary Repayment Plan

When you are behind on your car loan, it is necessary to immediately communicate with your lender to negotiate a resolution. Otherwise, the lender may decide to cut their losses and repossess the vehicle.

Many clients have found that their lenders have been open to a special arrangement to help them catch up on late payments. These repayment plans allow for you to tack on a small amount to your normal car payment to make up for missed payments. They may allow you to spread it across the rest of the loan, thereby allowing your to catch up without having to come up with all of the arrears at once.

A repayment plan works like this. Suppose that your normal car payment is $513 a month. Perhaps you lost your job and you were out of work for three months. During that time, you had money in savings to make one payment and you are now two months late on your car loan. If you ignore your lender, they might move to repossess the car.

Instead, you can contact your lender to work out an arrangement to get back on track. This could involve a loan modification. However, your lender will likely prefer a repayment plan that gradually brings you back to a current status on the loan. They may even allow you to spread it out across the remaining loan term, thereby reducing the extra monthly expense.

If you had 30 months remaining on your loan, your lender might be willing to spread out the two missed payments totalling $1026 over the last 30 months. This would increase your monthly payment by just over $34 a month.

A repayment plan is a great solution when you had a temporary hardship but are now able to resume your car payments. It might not be feasible though if you are experiencing a long-term reduction in income. For more permanent hardships, you really need to speak with your lender about other options.