When I bought the car a year ago I did not really have any established credit or a co-signer so the only place I could get approved with was Carmax

They made me put 33% down and slapped me with a 16% interest rate. My payments are currently 287 a month.
I've made every payment full and on time for a year now- what are my options as far as refinancing?
What kind of rate should I expect if I'm approved?
Who are some of the better companies to try with?
I don't want to have my credit pulled too many times so I'd like to just make a few inquiries.
Thanks!

 

Hard to say, how good is your credit now?

 

Yeah, like paranode said, start by requesting your free credit report and look at your FICO score....

 

where is a good place to get a copy of the report? I tried the freecreditreport.com thing a while back and just got a bunch of ads.

 

anybody?

 

the term "credit report". Get their 800 number (experian, equifax, transunion) and call them. There are prompts to request the free credit report for all of them I believe.

 

This is the site:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

You can pay an extra $5 or so to one of the companies to get your score with the report.

 

Right. stay away from "free"creditreport.com. annualcreditreport.com is the way to go.

 

Id negotiate first with your current loan holder; they have something to lose.

Next, maybe lending tree or your local bank.

Finally Id transfer some (if not all) of the balance onto a forever 2.9% intrest rate or something like that. Even with the 3% surcharge (which you may be able to waive) its still cheaper than 16%. This would be a last resort.

Ultimately, if you are making your car payments now then you should want to keep the same payment and simply lessen the time you need to pay it back (the final amount paid).

Simply lowering your payments will not be helpful in the long run.