Stillgoing

IS350:

Lexus Dealer #1: 36 month lease, 15k miles: 59% residual, .00365 mf, 48mo lease, 49% residual

Lexus Dealer #2: 36 month lease 15k miles, 59% residual, .0031 mf

Auto broker: 36 mo, 15k miles, 53% residual, .00237 mf, 48mo .00221 mf, 43% residual

Loan rates I've been quoted are around 6.75% to 7%

chipdesign

so after 36 months of lease, what will you do?
will you buy the car or lease another newer car?

36months X $600 amounts to a lot of money every 3 years, if you continue to lease.
if you lease that car, you loose a lot of money.
why bother to have the latest newest options for this car, and it is not your car, rather
just a loaner?

this can be compared to like if you are just paying a rent to live.
although nowadays rent is much cheaper than buying a home,

in the long run, you better off owning than renting a home, and buying than leasing a vehicle.

maybe $600/month is a drop in a bucket for you.

if i were to spend $600/month on luxury, that will be very nice living for eating and
shopping.

OneOfOne

post the monthly payments from those quotes. the auto broke seems to be the best deal. those other money factors are high. unless your credit stinks.

mcfly

Your house/car statement is seriously flawed. The reason being, a house is a typically APPRECIATING asset, whereas a car is a DEPRECIATING asset. Standard economics will teach you that you should in general buy assets that appreciate with time, and lease those that depreciate.

Leasing can result in big savings if you understand what you're doing. I don't want to keep any car more than 5 years, and I typically get rid of them every 3 whether they're in perfect operating condition or not. I like to drive all kinds of cars, and I don't want to deal with major repair bills. For me, leasing makes a lot of sense.

Wid IS350

This statement cracks me up. Anyone with a business knows that BUYING a car will give you the ability to write off the depreciation every year as a business expense. It often doesn't pay to keep a business vehicle longer than 4 years, even if it IS paid off!!

mcfly

Yeah, no ****. Except we're not talking about leasing in a business owner scenario.

jettie1767

You can deduct leasing costs if you have your own business. If you bought the car, you can deduct depreciation.

bagwell

I think its a helluva lot easier to deduct the leasing costs rather than having to calculate the depreciation (how do you do that anyway?)