Overhaulin'

Is it better to lease or buy a car?

Im looking to get a car and im not sure whether to lease it or buy it. Which is better in the long run? Thanks in advance!

Public Comments

1. lease if you plan on getting a car every so many years, buy if you plan to drive it for the life of the vehicle...
2. Depends if you wanna use it for a long time then go for a lease but since the economy sux everywhere thn buy while it cheap if you can
3. buy a used car, dont make payments, just one payment.
4. There's really no question about it, buying is always the smarter option. If you lease it, you're basically just renting a car for three years, at the end of the lease you'll have no equity and you just hand them the keys. If you're really thinking about leasing it's best to compare at a cost per mile of ownership. Add up all of the fees and taxes and payments and divide it by the number of miles that you'll have the car for. To make the math easy let's say the car with all of the taxes and fees and payments adds up to $36,000 and the lease is 3 years and allows 12,000 miles a year, that's 36,000 miles. So, at the end of it you'll have paid $1.00 / mile and you'll have nothing to show for it when it's over. Let's compare that to buying the car, let's say the same car was $50,000 if you wanted to buy it instead of lease it. If you stretch the loan from 36 months to 60 months your payments would be about the same as they would have been on the leased vehicle. Let's say you drive the same 12,000 / year. 12,000 x 5 years = 60,000 miles. 60,000 miles / $50,000 = $0.83 / mile. Plus, at the end of five years you've got a car that's paid off. Keep it for a few more years without having to make car payments or sell it, it's probably still worth at least $12,000. So, if you sell it at the end of those five years it would actually be 60,000 miles / $38,000 (price less what the vehicle is worth now) = $0.63 / mile. So, there you have it, it is always smarter to buy the car. In fact, if you want to be a little smarter than that you should buy the car used. Even if you want a new model, you should be able to find it used with only a few thousand miles on it for at least a few thousand dollars less than what it would have been new. Happy shopping, enjoy the buyer's market!
5. The answer to your question is different for different people. Leasing is good for some people (like me) but not good for others. It's not smart to lease if you don't understand how it works because it's easier to make mistakes than with buying. Here is a web site that might help: http://www.leaseguide.com/index2.htm .