Topic: I'm going car shopping

[Jake]

DK is right. The reason I leased my last new car (and its not a very good one) was because I got to drive a $35K car and paid payments as if driving a $17K car...

[ober]

I've gone over this before and leasing isn't for everyone in every situation.  But follow my logic:

I buy a car (financed for 60 months) and I pay $350/month for 5 years.  Let's think positive and say that I'm lucky and that car lasts me 7 years.  GREAT!  I have 2 years with no payments!  But those 2 years are also at the end of the life of the car, which means you're replacing things like bearings, struts, etc.  Expensive shit.  Are you still slightly ahead at the end?  Probably by a little.

Now, let's take that same car, lease it for 3 years at $250/month.  I'm under warranty for that entire time, at the end of the 3 years I can walk away from the car and do whatever I want (jump into another lease, or buy something).  Sure, if you jump from lease to lease to lease you're never going to get away from a car payment.  I never said that's what we're doing.

I'm not one of those people that needs a new car every few years.  I also don't think lease's make sense if you put on a lot of miles.  I didn't lease my Fit. 

On the other hand, I have a young family.  Who knows what our needs are going to be in 3 years?  Maybe we'll need something bigger, maybe smaller, maybe just different depending on what the kids get into.  I want that flexibility.

So you haters that just want to bitch about leases can just shove it because it does make sense in some situations.  Stop pigeon-holing everyone in the world.

[micah]

I would totally agree.... except, don't lease terms always require like a big chunk of cash to start? Most adds I see say "lease for just $299/mo after $3,000 down"

if you're not trading in a car you own to get that cash, making a down-payment on a car you're never going to own seems like a lot of money to just dish out. 

[ober]

The one I'm jumping into right now has 0 down.  They're not all like that, but usually you can work something out.  On most of them, you can do 0 down but your monthly payment will be higher.

[Mike]

The one I'm jumping into right now has 0 down.  They're not all like that, but usually you can work something out.  On most of them, you can do 0 down but your monthly payment will be higher.

Basically:  You are gonna pay X amount.  How it is hacked up is negotiable.  At least that has been my experience with car dealers.

How are the wear & tear issues dealt with?

[ober]

Depends.  If you're an asshole and you really destroy the car, you'll pay for it.  They allow minor bumps and small dings for the most part.  It's expected.  We had a lease on a Toyota Rav4 and we dropped it off, handed them the keys and walked away after a very brief glance at the car.  The guy said they'd give a more thorough look at it later but he never came back with anything.

Someone else told me that even if you have a fender bender, it's better to turn it in that way because they'll charge you like $500 or something where it would be $1500 to actually get it repaired elsewhere.

But I would never replace tires or anything.  They're not going to ding you for that.