New car buying tips

[Mossyoakglock]

We will be purchasing a new car in the next month or so as soon as we find the car with the options she wants. She wants a 4runner but trying to find one in the trim and color is seeming to be a little more difficult than we thought.

 

My question is, what are some good purchasing tips? We will be buying from a dealer. We are going to pull pricing from truecar.com and go from there. I've always heard that some of the fees/charges (dealer prep fee, etc) can be waived if you ask. Also never negotiate on the monthly payments, only on the final purchase price.

 

What are some other tricks, etc that you have used when purchasing a new car to get the best price? We are going in knowing exactly what she wants and doesn't want. Also, how do you find out the different dealer prices like MSRP, factory invoice, dealer invoice? Should we target pricing around factory or dealer invoice?

 

The last 3 cars that my family has purchased has been from the same Chevy dealer where we know the Sales Manager really well so we got the best prices possible. This time it will be at a random dealer where we know nobody.

 

As for financing we are not sure what we are going to do but we will not go through TFS. Heard too many bad things about them so we want to avoid them.