Fess up-anyone lease a car?

[tripleshot]

I know it's a MM sin. I need a new car and can afford the purchase payment, but DH wants me to lease. My car is 11 years old and starting to be a money pit. He says we can save the $ difference between the lease and purchase payments. He also thinks it would save us with $$$ repairs that our cars seem to need around the 5 year mark.

I've tried to argue against leasing, but he has very compelling arguments.

[hannamarin]

We leased our car. I think it would have been fine for us, except for the dents and dings and other physicsl damage to the car. Our mileage was WAY under but we had to buy it because of the crap we had done to the car. And then we paid a stupid amount...no negotiating.
To me lease is almost the same as renting. Like renting an apt

[madringal]

I have leased two. I bought out my last leased car and am now making payments to own it. To me, it is like renting vs buying - sometime renting makes sense for people. I can't imagine a situation where I will ever lease again, but I also can't imagine a situation where I will ever finance a car again. I am so over car payments!

[definitelyO]

nope - never. I don't drive far so could keep under the mileage requirements, but just seems like I'm throwing money away. I like not having a car payment.

[locarb]

we own a car and lease the other w/ the main reason we always want one newer car under warranty. I've leased 3 cars & I've never gone over on mileage and haven't had to worry about it, I drive 34 miles r/t a day. I must admit I enjoy driving a new car.

[isabel]

We lease my car. There's a very long back story to all of this, but we basically got majorly screwed in a couple of ways that left me without a car. We didn't have the enough cash to do a down payment big enough to make the monthly payment manageable (even on a used car). We're in a much better position now though. Ultimately, I would much rather own and not have to be concerned about dings and scratches. We'll probably end up buying it if it ends up being an issue. It's not the ideal situation, but it was all we could really do at the time. C'est la vie.

[isabel]

May 16, 2012 18:57:17 GMT -5 locarb said:

we own a car and lease the other w/ the main reason we always want one newer car under warranty. I've leased 3 cars & I've never gone over on mileage and haven't had to worry about it, I drive 34 miles r/t a day. I must admit I enjoy driving a new car.

Have you had issues returning cars after the lease was up? My car already has a couple of small scratches on it and I've had it barely 6 months.

[thelongroad]

I was at a much different place in my life when I leased a car, but it was bad! I was in college and needed a reliable car with minimal payment. When my lease was up I didn't have the money to do anything about it, so I financed the balloon payment :N: I probably payed close to double for that car.

[gt7301b]

The thing that your husband is forgetting is that once you are done making payments when you are purchasing a car you have a car at the end. I purchased my car new 11 years ago and haven't had a car payment for 7-8 years.

Why not buy a new car? The repairs around year 5 can't be more than a car payment.

[Deleted]

We used to lease when we only needed 1 car and drove less than 7k miles a year. It made sense. Now we live in the burbs and it doesn't make sense.

[bettybunker08]

I leased my car and then financed the buy out in the end. I discussed returning it to the dealership first and they considered the few dings and stains on the floor to be normal wear and tear. My mileage was way over because I had made a move during the lease term and ended up having a longer commute.

With the lease payments plus financing I ended up paying $17,000+ for a car that was originally $14,000. Never again.

[M]

I am an advocate for leasing, buying new, all the supposed anti-MM things to do. Really though, you need to do the math between the lease and financing on the car you're wanting to get. We've leased some of our cars and have financed some of our cars. It just depends on what makes more sense monetarily. You need to decide what you're planning on doing when the lease is up - return and get another car, pay the residual in cash, or finance the residual. Here is what my numbers look like for my latest lease (in percentages since I think most of you will stroke over the cost and I don't care to hear how it was a waste bc it's not a waste to me ).

Sticker with options - 100
Negotiated cash price - 91 (I negotiated the hell out of them and refused to budge on my number except by about 1% lol)
Monthly Lease price - 1.6
Monthly financed - 2.4
Lease + residual total cost at payoff - 97
Financed total cost at payoff - 167
Total lease cost + finance residual - 125

So with my car, your best option in order are:
1 - buy in cash
2 - lease then pay cash on the residual (our plan)
3 - lease then finance the residual
4 - finance

My brother recently leased a camry and his numbers look similar. He's glad he leased now because when his 3 years are up he plans to dump the car and lease something else.

[locarb]

May 16, 2012 23:24:48 GMT -5 isabel said:

May 16, 2012 18:57:17 GMT -5 locarb said:

we own a car and lease the other w/ the main reason we always want one newer car under warranty. I've leased 3 cars & I've never gone over on mileage and haven't had to worry about it, I drive 34 miles r/t a day. I must admit I enjoy driving a new car.

Have you had issues returning cars after the lease was up? My car already has a couple of small scratches on it and I've had it barely 6 months.

No issues and I've had scratches & door dings. It's under the CC rule. Meaning if it can be fixed by using your credit card the dealership will not charge you. Only major damage will you be penalized.

[McGavin]

We lease our cars through H's work. It's a special snowflake kinda thing though. The deal is so good, it doesn't make sense not to lease.

[tripleshot]

Thanks for the feedback (and the numbers M6). I've been doing a lot of research and reading on Edmunds. I think I'm over analyzing, as usual. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do, but have more to think about now.

[aerowife2010]

We thought about it but I'm so glad we decided not to. I've had my car now for almost 2 years and we are almost 10k miles more than we would have been "allowed" if we had leased. I didn't predict that I would have had to drive that much for work in the first few months of having the car. I wouldn't want to see that mileage overage charge if we had leased!

[tripleshot]

May 17, 2012 7:42:09 GMT -5 locarb said:

May 16, 2012 23:24:48 GMT -5 isabel said:

Have you had issues returning cars after the lease was up? My car already has a couple of small scratches on it and I've had it barely 6 months.

No issues and I've had scratches & door dings. It's under the CC rule. Meaning if it can be fixed by using your credit card the dealership will not charge you. Only major damage will you be penalized.

What do you mean by fixing it with your CC?

[isabel]

May 17, 2012 10:24:59 GMT -5 tripleshot said:

May 17, 2012 7:42:09 GMT -5 locarb said:

No issues and I've had scratches & door dings. It's under the CC rule. Meaning if it can be fixed by using your credit card the dealership will not charge you. Only major damage will you be penalized.

What do you mean by fixing it with your CC?

I've heard this before. I think it means that if the scratch/ding is smaller than a credit card they will consider it normal wear and tear and won't make you fix it before returning the car.

Thanks, locarb! That makes me feel a bit better.