Need New DD...~15k

[simulatedwood]

Leases are icky when you put on more then 60 miles a day. Better off owning the car at that point.

In my case, I buys\sell cars fairly often so my cost of ownership is gas and maintenance items (or driving for free). You know my system, stick with 10k cars and turn every year or 30k miles. It works..

[JET]

Sounds like you need to weigh how much you want AWD between the Kia and Suzuki. I don't think you could go wrong with either one.

[Trogdor]

Don't they hit you with a pretty hefty penalty?
Each company is different. It's between 15-30 cents per mile over.

If you're going to lease route now check out the deals Chevy is offering on the Volt. I've seen leases for as low as $250/month on that thing. I would definitely rock something like that as a daily due to the huge gas savings. Figure on average the Volt can go about 40 miles on electric, that should take care of most roundtrip commutes which means for regular daily use you'd barely be using any gas, if any.

It's misleading advertising. This is only a good deal if you have absolutely zero intentions of buying the car at the end of the lease. We do this crap too. You can lease an Evo for 259 a month right now. Fine print, its a 24 month, 24,000 lease, requires like 3000 down, plus tax title and licence. So, like $5000 cash down.

It's a great deal if you're like my dad who would always lease cars, and always expected to have a car payment. But it requires a lot of money down, on a short lease. Chevy wants like $2800 down + TTL for a 24/24 lease. This means you're putting nearly $5000 on a 2 year lease where you're only eating up 25% of the value of the car, leaving you with like 70-75% left to finance if you go to buy it. So not only are you not getting a subsidized rate, you're financing 3/4 as much, and you already put 5000 on that lease.

I figure 250/m for 24 months is $6,000 + they want $2800 down. So 8,800 of total principal payments. That's based on a car that MSRPs for nearly 40k. Look how much is going to be left at the end of 2 years. Like I said, we do that same crap on Evos, but it's not a good deal unless you truly just wanna lease it for 2 years and get something else.

If you plan to buy out a lease DON'T PUT huge chunks of money down on the lease!

[Murlo26]

I honestly plan to buy whatever car out at the end of a lease. Really the lease would be a delay of my purchase as I am short on cash now, so I'd expect to put some money down at that time if I need to. I know I drive quite a few miles Shawn but I hate my POS honda which would prolly make it through another 20k miles if I put like 400 into it to fix a few things. I just want something with a warranty where I put gas/oil into, gets decent gas mileage and everything in the car works. Which is why I am going newer.

The whole 10k car deal requires effort to find cars often and then it also requires that I either fix a decent amount of things myself or pay to fix things that break on $10k cars.Plus I like new shit ;)

But in all honesty, the Subaru lease and Kia one both seem pretty decent, the Kia one seems like a no brainer if I want that car.

Whatever I get, unless I hate it I'd plan to keep for at least 5 years, hopefully longer. All of my excess car money goes to the evo and fixing that and if I looked at another car I'd be upgrading/changing the evo not the DD.

And 40 miles on the volt gets me 2/3 of my daily miles but I refuse to buy a "government motors" vehicle. I should as we all own them and paid for them but I honestly think they make some pretty iffy cars. I like the cruz and the corvette, everything else is meh.

[Kracka]

I refuse to buy a "government motors" vehicle.
Nevermind the fact you almost bought a 'Vette ;)

The Volt is the single car I would consider a lease on, anything else, if you eventually want to own it...just buy it. Lease-to-own makes zero financial sense unless you're simply trying to buy something you can't afford, especially with all the 0% for 60 months financing deals manufacturers are offering.

What I see happening here is you originally wanting a $15k car, falling into the dealership numbers game trap, looking at only monthly payments rather than total cost, and ending up with another car closer to the $30k mark.

[Murlo26]

Nevermind the fact you almost bought a 'Vette ;)

The Volt is the single car I would consider a lease on, anything else, if you eventually want to own it...just buy it. Lease-to-own makes zero financial sense unless you're simply trying to buy something you can't afford, especially with all the 0% for 60 months financing deals manufacturers are offering.

What I see happening here is you originally wanting a $15k car, falling into the dealership numbers game trap, looking at only monthly payments rather than total cost, and ending up with another car closer to the $30k mark.

I didn't buy a vette though :) Like I said that is the only good car they make and it was going to be a used one anyway lol. Anyway side tracked.

Well if I truly wanted to I can afford 500/mo payments, I just didn't like the idea of that, seems silly lol. I don't have a car payment anymore, the evo's was done like a year ago and that was 405/mo.

If I could wait until spring I would as then I could use my bonus/tax return as a downpayment which would easily be 10k but the honda just sucks complete ass in snow/winter and needs a good chunk of change to keep it running.

I should've been shopping sooner so I didn't run outta time for car shopping but work has been hell lately.

So really not sure what to do. Not sure why leasing the Kia would be a bad idea, seems like everything looks alright and Trogdor's right, the lease rate is really cheap. It's no different then buying now or later if you plan to buy. I could always just take the low ass mile lease and plan to buy the car out at the end and drive it a ton of miles. Then have really low rates and save up for buying it later. it's taking a hit now or later, lease just delays it really.

[Kracka]

*edit*

It's obviously your money and we all look at our finances differently so this is just my 2-cents :)

[Murlo26]

Do you really want to be paying huge monthly payments or a large buy-out on a car that's already heavily depreciated though? IMO, if you can't, or don't want to, buy it now, then shop for something cheaper. Leasing and financing to the max is a viscous cycle; once you start its hard to stop and even harder to get out from under it (or ahead of the curve). It's obviously your money and we all look at our finances differently so this is just my 2-cents :)

How is 13.9k a big buyout though on a car that is 3 years old and ~35,000 miles. That is some of the cars I am looking at now, and its slightly cheaper.

I dunno, maybe I am looking at this wrong, but the lease rate is low so the financing is a decent deal, its not free money like 0% but pretty good.

So I pay 300/mo for 3 years then get a loan for like 10k or less as I'd put a few thousand up prolly and on a 3 yr old car with low miles its still a cheap car payment that I end up owning and I know everything that happened to the car from start to finish and I have a good warranty still.

I appreciate everyones input, I rarely ever buy stuff like this and that is why I am asking. This discussion is helping out a lot and making me see all the sides of the equation. Please continue :)

edit: beat your edit :)

[Kracka]

edit: beat your edit :)
I see that ;)

[Murlo26]

I see that ;)

So am I really looking at this strangely or wrong? It's a 24k car that with the lower rates I am paying financing yes but I don't think its like raped in the butt financing where you end up paying 2x the cars worth.

I dunno, input?