I just haggled for the first time and saved myself $12K

I have never thought about haggling, even if I thought I was being ripped off. As an introvert I just find it far too overwhelming and pushy and arrogant and entitled and all the adjectives. So I just pay whatever I'm told the price is. I once bought a phone case for $50 even though I thought it was way overpriced, all because I picked it up without seeing the tag and I didn't want to face the awkwardness of telling the cashier to cancel the transaction.

But that changed today.

My wife and I bought a car five years ago and got a loan with interest. It turned a $30K car into a $33K car, so it wasn't a bad deal. That has been paid off, so now we're buying a second car. It's a bit more expensive at $42K, but based on what we ended up paying for the first car, we didn't think the interest would be that bad. Turns out I was wrong.

We got the loan approval back today and the end of loan cost would have been $65K, that's more than a 50% increase. Our credit is even better than it was five years ago and we're in a better financial position, yet we're getting screwed with increased interest. Inflation can excuse a little bit of an increase, but not an extra $23K, so I definitely felt like I was being ripped off.

I told the car dealer that the loan was ridiculous, and they dropped the interest rate by 1%. I told them no, that's still ridiculous, I'm not agreeing to it. So they dropped it another 0.5%. But jeez, that still only got it to $61K. That's unjustifiable. That absolutely floored me.

Since I felt like they were ripping me off, I just went straight to my bank. Because of my fantastic credit score, they offered me a very generous interest rate. It dropped the price to $53K.

I told the car dealer "I can get this deal from my bank, so unless you can beat it I'll just go through them".

And they beat it. Not by much, but they still beat it.

By telling them how ridiculous their loan rate was, and by telling them I'll get a loan elsewhere, they agreed to %. That will save me $12K over the length of the loan.

Even though I'm glad I'm saving money, it makes me feel terrible for all the people that are getting ripped off. The auto lending industry being predatory isn't news, but it's still shocking to see that they can lose $12,000 and still make a profit.

To all the introverts reading this, I hope you can get your own victories in similar situations.