Calculate Your Finance
Move the sliders to see what your weekly repayments could look like
Your Details
Based on 8.95% over 60 months
Want to know what you'd actually be approved for?
The figure on the left is a guide based on an indicative rate. Answer a few questions about your situation and we'll come back with a likelihood — no credit check, so it leaves no mark on your file.
Disclaimer: These are indicative rates only. Final rates depend on your credit history, income verification, and lender approval. Our team will contact you to confirm your personalised rate.
A smaller weekly payment usually costs more
Stretching a loan over more years brings the weekly figure down, which is why it is the first thing you will be offered. It also means paying interest for longer. Here is the same $30,000 loan at 8.95% over different terms — the weekly number falls, the total climbs.
| Term | Weekly | Interest paid |
|---|---|---|
| 2 years | $315 | $2,791 |
| 3 years | $219 | $4,233 |
| 4 years | $172 | $5,715 |
| 5 years(shown above) | $143 | $7,237 |
| 6 years | $124 | $8,798 |
| 7 years | $111 | $10,397 |
Going from three years to seven on this example saves about $108 a week and costs about $6,164 more in interest. Neither is automatically the right answer — a payment you can comfortably meet matters more than a number on a page — but you should be choosing between them knowingly.
What actually changes the rate you are offered
The 8.95% above is an assumption used to do the arithmetic, not a rate anyone has offered you. Real offers vary considerably, and mostly on these:
- Your credit history
- The single biggest factor. A clean record with no missed payments opens the lower end of the range; recent defaults narrow it sharply, though they rarely close it entirely.
- What you can actually afford
- Lenders weigh your income against your existing commitments — rent or mortgage, other loans, buy-now-pay-later, dependants. Two people on the same salary can be offered very different rates.
- The vehicle itself
- Age, kilometres and type all count, because the car is the security. An older import is assessed differently from a late-model dealer car, which is one reason a bank and a specialist lender can quote you very differently for the same purchase.
- Your deposit
- More deposit means borrowing less against the same asset, which lowers the lender’s risk. It also shortens the period where you owe more than the car is worth.
- The term
- Longer terms sometimes carry a slightly higher rate as well as more interest overall — see the table above.
The costs a repayment figure leaves out
The calculator above shows principal and interest. A real contract usually adds some of the following, and they are worth asking about before you sign rather than after:
- An establishment fee — a one-off charge for setting the loan up.
- An account or monthly fee — small, but it runs for the whole term.
- Security registration — the cost of recording the lender’s interest on the Personal Property Securities Register.
- Add-ons — mechanical breakdown insurance, payment protection, extended warranties. These are optional. They are also where a cheap-looking loan often stops being cheap, so price them separately from the finance.
Under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, a lender has to disclose all of this in writing before you commit. Read that disclosure — it is the document that tells you what the loan really costs, and the annual rate on it is the number to compare.