Why a car loan can beat paying cash

This post by Lance originally appeared as a guest post at Budgets are Sexy.

While I was in college, I had a beater car. It was pretty clear to me that I would need to get a more reliable ride, but the thing was, I didn't want a car loan.

So I saved like crazy to have enough money to pay for a newer used car all in cash. I ended up having to save my money from college gigs and a ton of money from my first post-college job too.

Once I finally had enough money saved up, I decided to start shopping for my car. I thought I'd be buying a used one, but instead I ended up coming up with some solid reasons not to buy a used car and changed my mind. So what did I get? A brand spankin' new 2010 Honda Civic. And while I could have paid for it all in cash, I took out a car loan instead. WHAT?!

Yup, I took out a loan and here's why:

I needed an installment loan on my credit history.

One factor of your credit scores is the type of credit you have. This accounts for just 10% of your score, but it is still an important factor. The types of credit include mortgage loans, revolving credit (credit cards), auto loans and student loans. Even though I had just recently graduated from college, I was extremely lucky that I didn't have to take out any student loans. I did have a credit card or two in college, but I always paid them off each month.

I had never had a mortgage before, but I knew I'd want one in the next few years. In order to get my credit scores as high as possible to get the best interest rate on my future mortgage, I needed to have an auto loan on my record. This was one of the factors I considered when taking out my loan. (Post continues below.)

I got a sick interest rate.

Things had started to recover from the financial crisis, but definitely were not back to normal yet. Car loans were not easy to get. Even if you could get one, the interest rates normally weren't great. Car dealerships weren't selling cars, though, and they had a lot of inventory due to poor sales. Thus, the advertised rate was 0.9% APR for 24 to 36 months on all new 2010 Honda Civics.

These types of deals were pretty rare at the time, but I figured I might as well try for it. I had my checkbook with me in case I couldn't secure the financing. After I signed the application, they came back and said I just barely squeaked past their credit score limit and qualified for 0.9% for 36 months.

This was great news because, at the time, my savings account was paying 1.1% interest. Nothing fantastic, but more than enough to cover my loan costs, and even after taxes I would only lose a few pennies. To me it was more than worth it to raise my credit score for a potential future mortgage.

It is nice to have the cash in the bank.

By taking out a car loan, I got to keep the purchase price of the vehicle in my savings account. I already had a six-month emergency fund, but you never know what the future has in store for you. It definitely wasn't going to hurt me.

Thanks to ING Direct, I was able to set enough money aside to pay the car off in full in a savings sub-account. Then I set up auto-pay for my bill and haven't had to think about it since other than to make sure the payments come out on time.

So, is this for everyone?

Definitely not. If you do come across the right circumstances, though, sometimes it does make sense to take out a loan instead of paying cash. If I had gotten a 0% interest loan I'd even be making a little bit of money by keeping it all in my savings, but unfortunately I wasn't quite that lucky.

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If I had had any doubt about being able to leave the money alone, I would have paid in cash that day, and I would recommend you do the same. However, if you can avoid touching the money, it does leave a nice safety cushion in case of a major emergency that goes beyond your emergency fund.

What would you have done? Would you have written the check if you had the cash available?

More on Budgets are Sexy and MSN Money:

• How I got fired and took a free vacation to New Orleans
• 4 ways to keep your financial household sexy
• When you say 'I do,' who pays the debt?
• Bankrupt at 23: How I survived
• 5 ways to repair your credit scores
• When not to close a credit account