Why You Should Always Buy Your Car at the End of the Month

Car dealerships are sales-driven organizations with regular monthly sales goals and quotas that need to be met.

At the beginning of the month, everyone is usually optimistic and thinks they're going to sell more cars than the month before. They may not be willing to entertain low-ball offers since it's still early in the game.

As the month progresses, some dealers find themselves performing very poorly compared to prior months and they start getting a bit desperate.

There are many different hidden sales incentives that manufacturers provide dealers, and it's almost always based on selling a certain amount of cars before the end of the month. Some high volume dealers are setup to make profits based solely on these sales-driven incentives. If they don't hit their monthly goals, they stand to lose a ton of money.

By this time, you should know why it's important to negotiate your purchase towards the end of the month - it's the best time to weed out the desperate and hungry dealers who are willing to sell you a car (sometimes at a loss) in order to hit their sales goals.

As if the sales incentives weren't enough, some manufacturers also have a system in place called "turn and earn". They allocate future supplies of vehicles based on how many each dealer sold in the previous month. If a dealer wants a continuous supply of popular cars, they need to consistently sell a large amount of them each month.

If you wait until the end of the month to negotiate, you're way more likely to have a dealer give you an excellent deal on your car. Ideally, you should wait until there are 4 or 5 business days left until the end of the month before you seriously start negotiating and playing each dealer off one another.