When the interest-rate cut will hit your mortgage, car loan, credit-card bills and savings accounts
Consumers holding off on big financial moves until interest rates fall may be waiting for some time to come, experts say.
The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points Wednesday. Consumers were primed and ready for the rate cut: In a NerdWallet survey conducted in July, 61% of respondents said they planned to take some financial action once interest rates for consumers dropped. About one-fourth said they planned to buy a car; one-fifth planned to invest some of their savings, and about an equal share planned to refinance a loan; and one in six intended to get a new credit card.
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Yet for those who have the luxury of trying to time their money moves, “the fact is, the impact at the outset is pretty minimal” except on loans as large as mortgages, for which modest interest-rate changes can translate to big dollars, Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, told MarketWatch.
Related: Lower interest rates are finally here. Here’s how to decide if you should refinance your mortgage.
He expects interest rates to come down more slowly than they went up. “This is the beginning of a series of rate cuts,” McBride noted. “As those rate cuts mount, for the balance of this year and through much or all of 2025, that’s when the pocketbook effect will be more noticeable.”
In response to high inflation, the Federal Reserve started to gradually increase the federal-funds rate in 2022 from a range of 0% to 0.25% up to 5.25% to 5.50%. This made the cost of borrowing — whether through credit cards, car loans or mortgages — significantly more expensive for people. Average credit-card rates reached an all-time high in 2024, and continue to hover near 21%.
That has turned up the financial pressure for the 77% of American families with debt. “In the first quarter of 2024, credit-card and auto-loan transition rates into serious delinquency continued to rise across all age groups,” Joelle Scally, regional economic principal within the household and public-policy research division at the New York Fed, said in May. “An increasing number of borrowers missed credit-card payments, revealing worsening financial distress among some households.”
With the prime rate going down, “we should start to see borrowing costs for autos decline,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic told MarketWatch. “Mortgage rates have already come down … and credit-card interest rates will go down a little bit — but that’s always the worst debt to take out.”
Still, experts say the impact of a 50-basis-point decrease on consumers will be minimal at the onset. People may not see a noticeable difference in monthly payments until after the Fed has made several rate cuts, likely by 2025. Affordability will also continue to be a challenge for consumers despite lower interest rates, as prices remain high compared to before the pandemic.
However the Fed decides to act going forward, the most impactful move borrowers can make is to improve their credit scores — by making on-time payments and reducing their credit utilization, for instance — to get better interest rates when they borrow money.
“I think the most important thing to not lose track of among all of the rate-cut talk is that your credit scores are more influential to the cost of your funds than rate cuts,” John Ulzheimer, a credit expert and former FICO FICO and Equifax EFX employee, told MarketWatch. “If the Fed cuts rates 50 to 100 basis points over the next year and you’re at [a] FICO 600 [credit score], then who cares? You’re still going to be paying very high rates, if you can get approved at all.”
For those aiming to time big financial decisions to movements in interest rates, here are some expert insights on exactly when you can expect to see the effects of Fed rate cuts — and how much money you stand to save.
When will car loans be affected by Fed interest-rate cuts?
Interest rates on car loans have already come down in anticipation of Fed rate cuts, Mike Douglas, head of dealer services at Chase Auto JPM, told MarketWatch. “Since May, we have seen rates come down a little over 100 basis points,” he said. The current interest rate on new cars was 6.84% in the second quarter, according to Experian UK:EXPN EXPGY.
The translation for car buyers: about $20 a month in savings on an average car payment. A full percentage-point decline in interest rates only reduces the average monthly payment from $740 to $718, Cox Automotive chief economist Jonathan Smoke told the Detroit Free Press.
“It is doubtful that auto rates will rapidly decline as soon as the Fed starts cutting,” Smoke wrote in July, adding that auto-loan rates “are bound to be sticky on the way down.”
Looking ahead, Moody’s MCO chief economist Mark Zandi told MarketWatch he expects the average five-year car-loan rate to fall to about 7% by the end of 2025, from roughly 7.82% currently, if the Fed cuts the federal-funds rate by at least a quarter of a percentage point per quarter beginning in September.
The bigger affordability issue for car buyers is the price of an automobile, which soared during the pandemic — increasing to an average of more than $49,000 in August, from $38,000 in March 2020, according to the car-buying app CoPilot.
When will credit cards be affected by Fed interest-rate cuts?
Cash-strapped consumers are relying on credit cards for everything from groceries to school supplies as the cost of living goes up. Credit-card interest rates typically start to come down a few weeks after the Fed cuts rates, NerdWallet NRDS spokesperson Sara Rathner told MarketWatch. The average rate is now at about 20.78%, according to Bankrate, up from about 15% before the pandemic.
However, credit-card APRs likely won’t come down meaningfully until the federal-funds rate is down by several hundred basis points, Ulzheimer told CBS News, which may not be achieved until 2025. Moody’s Zandi expects credit-card rates to still be near 20% by then.
These record-high credit-card interest rates are harming borrowers’ overall financial health, according to Cox’s Smoke. “Interest expense on credit cards appears to be crowding out spending on goods and services and is likely contributing to delinquencies and defaults on credit cards and auto loans,” he wrote.
Even when rates do fall, credit cards remain an incredibly expensive form of debt, NerdWallet’s Rathner noted. A person might stand to save a few dollars in interest each month when rates come down, but it is far more important to “prioritize paying that debt down as aggressively as you can,” she said.
When will mortgage rates be affected by Fed interest-rate cuts?
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has already fallen from highs close to 8% last October. Fannie Mae FNMA predicts the average rate will fall from 6.35% currently to an average 6.1% in the second quarter of 2025, and 5.9% by the fourth quarter of 2025. Rates at 6% and below are considered a “magic” level that could entice home buyers who’ve been waiting on the sidelines of the real-estate market.
The median list price for a house in August was about $430,000. For buyers looking to borrow $340,000, a decrease from 6.35% to 6.1% would translate to a roughly $50 decrease in their monthly payment, from $2,115 to $2,060.
See also: How low could mortgage rates go now that the Fed has finally started cutting? Economists weigh in.
For existing homeowners considering refinancing their mortgage, only a small share would be impacted by such a decrease. Just 14.3% of outstanding mortgages had an interest rate of 6% or higher as of early 2024, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
“I don’t imagine we’ll see a wave of refinancing except for people who are stuck in high-APR mortgages, or people who have high APRs because their credit was bad, but will be good enough to qualify for something better,” Ulzheimer told MarketWatch.
Moody’s Zandi and Fannie Mae both expect the average 30-year mortgage rate to fall below 6% by the end of 2025 if the Fed continues to make cuts, which could unlock a lot of home-buying demand. Nationwide expects the rate to decline to 5.35% by the fourth quarter of next year.
When will savings-account APYs be affected by Fed interest-rate cuts?
Many people have been keeping their emergency cash in high-yield savings accounts and CDs, plenty of which have been offering rates above 5%. Unfortunately, falling interest rates will also impact these accounts, and we’re already seeing the effects.
“This year has seen around 53 decreases and seven increases in top CD rates,” according to a Bankrate report. The rates on high-yield savings accounts can change at any time, but CD rates are fixed for the term. “If rates continue to decrease on CDs, you may thank yourself for locking in a high yield now, as long as you’re comfortable parting with the money for the CD’s entire term,” the report said.
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