I’m aware that I should never discuss how I plan to finance a vehicle with the dealer until I have an out the door price pinned down. However, my situation is that my partner is going to be the one actually purchasing the vehicle, but I am the one researching everything. I plan to be the one making negotiations with the dealer, and I am concerned because my partner doesn’t really know a lot about what to expect or how to navigate savvily. He also doesn’t like confrontation, and I can see him being easily manipulated by the dealer. My partner has a preapproval through NFCU and my first goal is to see how much I can talk to the dealer down on out the door pricing and then my second goal is to see if they can beat the NFCU APR (without getting screwed some other way).
I just don’t know exactly how I should go about it. Should I go to the dealer by myself, negotiate the price, and then bring my partner in to take care of financing? Do people do that?