Sleigh your holiday budget: Easy auto refinancing with AUTOPAY puts cash back in your pocket

Your holiday gift list may be growing — but your paycheck isn’t. Before picking up another shift or running up your credit card bill, look to your garage to see if you can save some money on your car payment.

Refinancing a car loan can reduce the amount of money you owe on your vehicle and lower your monthly payment.

Your current auto loan is a snapshot of the time when you applied for the loan. If your credit has improved, the rate available to you now could be lower. And the financial winds may also be at your back: Federal Reserve figures show commercial bank rates on 60-month new-car loans averaged 8.16% in 2024, compared with just 7.54% in August 2026.

Refinancing replaces the existing auto loan with a new one that pays it off. Enter AUTOPAY, a service that connects borrowers with a network of banks, credit unions and other financing partners without having to return to your dealership.

AUTOPAY

AUTOPAY makes refinancing your loan simple and low-stress. You can give your financial, vehicle and loan info either online or on the phone, and AUTOPAY automatically searches for your best option through its extensive network of trusted lenders and financial institutions.

Your initial prequalification check is a soft credit inquiry, so you don’t have to worry about it dinging your credit score. Then you complete the verification and review the contract before signing electronically. And all of this can be finalized online without an in-person dealership or bank visit. Best of all, there’s no application fee.

AUTOPAY offers loans in amounts from $2,500 to $100,000 and terms from 24 to 96 months for qualified applicants.

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How much money could you save? Take, for example, a hypothetical borrower who owes $25,000 at a fixed 12% interest rate with 48 monthly payments remaining. Their payment is about $658.

Refinancing that balance at a fixed 8% for the same 48 months would reduce the payment to approximately $610. That frees up about $48 a month, or $576 over 12 payments, and reduces the remaining interest by approximately $2,305.

Let’s say you want to reduce your payments, but you don’t necessarily need to reduce your total out-of-pocket expense. By stretching the 8% replacement loan to 72 months, you would lower the payment to about $438. The remaining interest would total approximately $6,560, not much more than keeping the 12% loan for its remaining four years.

When savings are this easy, it might feel like Christmas has come early.

Why Trust the New York Post

This article was written by Brooklyn-based financial journalist and Commerce Editor for the New York Post Will Kenton. Specializing in investing, personal finance and retirement planning, Will’s expertise is rooted in behavioral economics — a field he explored as associate editor of the New School Economics Review. Will aims to help readers navigate the “predictable irrationality” that influences financial decisions, providing practical real-world solutions to student loan debt, investments, mortgages and more. Before joining The Post in 2026, Will covered the intersection of money, economics and culture for Investopedia, AP News, Business Insider and TIME Stamped.