ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Interest rates are at a 22-year high, but the Federal Reserve has finally signaled it plans to lower rates when it meets in three weeks. So, is now the time to finally think about getting another car?

Right now, News10NBC’s Deanna Dewberry’s “Gertrude” (her car) is running just fine, but you reach a point in the life of every car that the repairs cost more than a payment would cost, and it’s time to bid your ole’ girl farewell.

Most analysts believe the Federal Reserve will lower rates by a quarter of a point, but haven’t counted out the possibility of half a point. But our financial expert says if your car is still running just fine, it may benefit you to wait. After all, the Federal Reserve meets twice more before the end of the year.

Right now, the average new car auto loan ranges from 5.6% to 14.8%. For used cars it’s higher, 7.6% to 21.5%. Financial expert and CEO of Invessent Wealth Management says patience is indeed a virtue.

“Holiday sales, a lot of banks will advertise a reduction in interest rate if you decide to lend with them. Something though that consumers may want to realize, more so than interest rate fluctuations, what they can control better is what their own credit score is, because if their own credit score is in the trash, they’re going to get a terrible terrible interest rate regardless of what the fed does, I don’t care,” Jarrett Felton says.

Deanna Dewberry, News10NBC: “What are some of the immediate things that you can do, first thing that you can do to improve that score?”

Jarrett Felton: “You’d probably want to tackle the amount of debt that you have accumulated compared to the overall limits that you have because that makes up about 35% of your overall credit score.”

What Felton is talking about there is your credit utilization rate. That’s the total amount of debt you owe across all your credit cards, divided by all your available credit. So if you have $5,000 in debt and $10,000 in available credit, your utilization rate is 50-percent. You want a rate of 30-percent or lower.

So Felton says while you wait for the Fed to lower rates, you should take steps to improve your score.

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