While I wouldn’t lease, I wouldn’t back out now. Use it as an opportunity to save for your next car. At the end of the lease you can decide if it’s a good deal by comparing the buyout price to the price for simile used cars.
Leasing over the years would have cost me far, far, far more than I've paid. And I wouldn't have been able to put 35K/yr on them (some I actually did) without huge penalties.
My son bought a new car. I let him do all the research and have him decide what to buy and even negotiate a price. After 2 weeks he found a car and was considering leasing (Pressure from the salesman). He’s a bright boy with a degree from RPI. So we sat down and I pulled out all the information on the cars we’ve owned for the past 20 years. I keep records of all repairs and maintenance on all vehicles. I handed him the records…what we paid for each vehicle…all the maintenance records…and had him total it up and compare it to what it would have cost me if we leased…the savings of 5 cars for that time period was over $20k.
I’ve yet to see anyone show me how leasing is cheaper.
"I've yet to see anyone show me how leasing is cheaper."
My personal impression is that it is cheaper only for a business that can write-off the leasing as a business expense. For an individual…no…
It is cheaper for a business, because the cost goes under operating expenses rather than capital equipment to be depreciated. Operating expenses are not only recorded differently at tax times, but they’re used to access operating capital loans from banks. It also has other advantages for a business, as it isolates the executives driving the cars from personal liability, it acts as a “perk”, reducing the need to pay higher salaries to attract and hold executives, and… and this is a biggie… for employees that travel a lot of business it can be a lot cheaper than paying mileage. In addition, it’s important for a company to appear successful to clients and to vendors, and it’s bad policy to allow your employees to be driving these important business relations around in a 5-year-old beater. You want them driven around in a brand new sedan.
Leasing for an individual has none of these benefits. Except maybe driving around in a new car. That one would be arguable.
"Leasing for an individual has none of these benefits. Except maybe driving around in a new car. "
+1
This is just my theory–which anyone can reject if they see fit–but I think that leasing gives many people the opportunity to be seen driving a more expensive car than they could afford to purchase. Since living beyond one’s means is a goal for some people, I think that leasing gives them this opportunity.
As I may have mentioned in posts at an earlier point, I know somebody (an acquaintance from high school days) who has a gambling problem. Both he and his wife spend at least two weekends each month gambling away their money in Atlantic City. Because he has the innate need to appear affluent, he leases a new Cadillac every couple of years. He can’t afford to buy a new…anything…but leasing gives him the opportunity to look affluent to those who don’t know the real story.
I can afford this car paying it out front now as it is my only option or paying the remainder of the lease which would not get me anywhere.
I don’t know much about cars except simple google searches. How do I go about looking into how much to haggle for a price on a 2015 Buick Encore convenience?
Look at Edmonds.com, msncars.com, AutoTrader.com…and there are more.
All these sites will show you what the car is worth and what a good price to pay is.
I wouldn’t worry too much, like someone else has said earlier; the deal has been signed, and you won’t have to worry about repairs while you’re moving.
Going off my previous car search, if I leased a vehicle, I’d never stop looking and test driving cars. I searched, off and on, for 2~3 years before I finally made my purchase back in 2010.
Well our last van only lasted 11 years, before there was too much going wrong, leasing at $200 a month for 36 months, under the 12k per year limit saves us $18 per month for a $24k car vs the $26k van over 11 years, plus no time out for brakes, tires, trans or coolant changes, repair costs, Have bumper to bumper coverage so “I’ve yet to see anyone show me how leasing is cheaper.” Now if your car lasts longer sure, but my time and inconvenience is a factor also.
Well our last van only lasted 11 years, before there was too much going wrong, leasing at $200 a month for 36 months, under the 12k per year limit saves us $18 per month for a $24k
#1 Leases go for 2 years. If you keep buying $24k vehicles every 2 years then you keep buying smaller and cheaper. Car prices go up…not down.
#2 - $24,000 lease for $200/month - Where do you live - Fantasy Island? $24,000 vehicle lease is over $300…MINIMUM. Yes I’ve seen the $200/mo lease…that’s after you put down a $10,000 deposit.
So lets recalculate using realistic numbers…
12 years of leasing = $50,400
Buy a car for $24,000 with a 5 year loan at 3% and keep it for 12 years equals $25,860.
That’s a huge difference.
It can’t always just be about the money. There are intangibles involved, flexibility, cash flow, buying a car and trading it in on the new model every 2 years costs money too.
Buying makes sense for someone who wants to drive the same car for 10-12 years. But how do you put a dollar value on driving a 12 year old car you don’t like anymore?
It can't always just be about the money. There are intangibles involved, flexibility, cash flow, buying a car and trading it in on the new model every 2 years costs money too.
I agree…that’s why I ALWAYS qualified what I said - saying for financial reasons it makes no sense to lease. But that’s not what many Lease advocates argue. They keep saying how it’s saving them money…which is just plain WRONG. One guy here was arguing how after two years his cars were costing him THOUSANDS each year to maintain it. Then you buy a better built car or find a good mechanic. This guy spent more money in ONE year on car REPAIRS for a vehicle with less then 36k miles then we have for the past 5 vehicles each with miles that ranged from 250k miles to almost 500k miles.
yes, i do believe if we strictly look at cost, it is difficult to argue that leasing is less expensive (especially when you look at the entire picture)
sometimes you will never convince people. the math that has been presented so far is incomplete and not comparable.
since this is a great forum to vette ideas, lets have some people throw up complete scenarios of how a lease is cheaper.
i’ll volunteer to mathematically analyze it.
of course, there is nothing wrong with leasing, just know that you shouldn’t state that it is cheaper.
One guy I met in my town was here in NH doing a research project at Harvard for 2 years. He was from Austin TX. He didn’t want to drive his car up here and expose it to the vast amounts of road salt. So he leased a car for 2 years (which ended up being 3). I’d probably do the same thing.
For the cost of keeping two cars, he probably could have washed his car every day in NH and still saved money.
For the cost of keeping two cars, he probably could have washed his car every day in NH and still saved money
Even washing every day isn’t the same as not exposing the vehicle to that environment in the first place. Now add in the fact that he had limited experience in driving in the snow.