Money Guide Ireland

Borrowing money to buy a new car can cost a lot less from some lenders. There is plenty of competition out there but you need to compare rates carefully to ensure you are getting the best deal.
If you can get zero percent finance from a dealer (Opel has offers at the moment) – you will be doing well. You might not be able to haggle on the price as much – but 0% finance on 13000 euro over 3 years could be worth as much as 1500 euro in saved interest charges.

Some lenders are advertising car loans as if they are different rates to loans for other purposes – but in most cases the car loan rates are just the same as a loan for any other purpose (except mortgages)
The rate of interest may vary, you will usually get a lower rate if you borrow more.

Until February 28, Bank of Ireland is offering a promotional fixed rate of 6.9 per cent APR on car loans of €20,000 or more over five years. But you could get this same rate on smaller amounts from Tesco Personal Finance.
Halifax has also just launched its new car loan product, with fixed rates of 6.5 to 8.8 per cent, depending on how much you borrow.You need to borrow over 25k to get a rate of 6.5% APR. If you are borrowing this much – then the Halifax is the place to go.
If you borrow €15k or more you get a Garmin Sat Nav absolutely free!
The headline rate doesn’t look so good if you borrow 13k\over 3 yrs the APR is 7.2%. So again the 6.9% from Tesco is better . Borrowing between 15k and 25K from Halifax gets you an APR of 6.9% – the same as Tesco (but you get the Satnav from Halifax)

EBS loan rates range from 7.99 per cent to 11.37 per cent too high to even consider.

Permanent TSB have varying rates – New cars over €15,000 – APR 6.9%. New cars between €9,000 – €15,000 – APR 7.9%. New cars under €9,000 and used cars – APR 8.9%.
Minimum loan amount €2,500, The APR for loans from €5,000 to €8,999 is 10.4% and for loans less than €5,000 the APR is 11.7%.

Tip: Try to match your repayment plan with the length of time you’ll have the car. Borrowing over a longer term means you have lower monthly repayments but it will cost you a lot more in interest over the life of the

Halifax Ireland have launched a new savings account paying 5.15% interest on balances upto 10000 Euro. The rate on amounts over 10k is 4%. Interest is paid quarterly and there are no restrictions on withdrawls. The account can be operated online or in a branch or over the telephone. This is one of the better rates in Ireland at the moment – but is still slightly lower than First Active’s online account paying 5.22% on balances upto 15k. See full list of best buys here

Ulster Bank have increased the interest rate on their E-Savings account to 4.4% AER. This is an internet only account – and you don’t have to have an existing Ulster Account. No penalties on withdrawls – 4.4% paid on balances from 1 euro to 500k.

AIB stuck to the date it guaranteed to pay 7.1% – and dropped the rate on it’s regular saver account to 4%.

AIB said that around 300,000 people had opened regular saver accounts to benefit from the high interest rate. It seems surprising that so many people were attracted by this account – which openly stated that the 7.1% was only guaranteed till Dec 31 2007. See our up to date information on the Best Rates for Regular Savers - for alternatives to AIB.

Head of funding at AIB Hugh O’Keeffe said there would be no penalties imposed on people who withdraw their money now that the rate had been reduced.