Why the out-the-door price is the only number that matters

When you walk into a dealership, you're surrounded by numbers designed to distract you: the monthly payment, the MSRP, the 'today only' discount. The single number that actually tells you what a car costs is the out-the-door (OTD) price — everything included, taxes and fees and all.

Dealers love to negotiate on monthly payment because it's easy to hide a longer loan term, a higher rate, or thousands in add-ons inside a payment that 'feels' affordable. Anchor to OTD and those tricks stop working.

Every SaveOnCar deal starts by setting your target OTD. From there, our negotiator holds the line on that number with every dealer — so you're always comparing apples to apples.