Leasing ALWAYS makes sense...
Discussion
Leicesterdave said:
No??
Unlike anything else in life I don't see the sense in 'owning' your car- is there any point in having someone you own by the time it potentially becomes a money pit? The ideal garage for me is a modern car for everyday use and a classic car for fun days (and a nice classic is clearly the car you want to own).
An Audi Allroad can be had for £250ish pounds a month (£300ish if you count initial payment) for 2 years- isn't any other similar car going to cost the same or more to buy?
I bought my car for £1500 and I do 30-40k miles per year. how much would that cost me on a lease?Unlike anything else in life I don't see the sense in 'owning' your car- is there any point in having someone you own by the time it potentially becomes a money pit? The ideal garage for me is a modern car for everyday use and a classic car for fun days (and a nice classic is clearly the car you want to own).
An Audi Allroad can be had for £250ish pounds a month (£300ish if you count initial payment) for 2 years- isn't any other similar car going to cost the same or more to buy?
At £300 per month you already own a money pit.
hora said:
A 2010 car says 'I'm struggling'.
A brand new Allroad says 'hey I'm doing ok'.
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted. A brand new Allroad says 'hey I'm doing ok'.
Someone once asked me why I drove a Aygo- I'm happy in my own skin.
Dr Jekyll said:
swisstoni said:
Seems a lot of people brick it at the thought of random massive bills and choose leasing to avoid that worry.
I can never understand the attitude that the bills a 4 year old car will throw up will be a financial disaster, but £300 a month every month isn't a problem.(I don't lease btw!)
Leicesterdave said:
I own a 10 year old Octavia Scout, it treats me well- but I am about to enter a job where it may rightly or wrongly may be perceived as me not doing well.
It does look a bit shedy and has served me well but arriving at a clients house or office block with it would just look odd-
No, it won't. Nobody will care, few will even notice. It does look a bit shedy and has served me well but arriving at a clients house or office block with it would just look odd-
Three rules of car buying.
1) Buy used.
2) Pay cash.
3) Remember nobody will think better of you because of your car choice.
You can break one rule without too much penalty, breaking two is liable to be expensive. Break all three and you'll regret it.
Leicesterdave said:
No??
Unlike anything else in life I don't see the sense in 'owning' your car- is there any point in having someone you own by the time it potentially becomes a money pit? The ideal garage for me is a modern car for everyday use and a classic car for fun days (and a nice classic is clearly the car you want to own).
An Audi Allroad can be had for £250ish pounds a month (£300ish if you count initial payment) for 2 years- isn't any other similar car going to cost the same or more to buy?
Do it then. Unlike anything else in life I don't see the sense in 'owning' your car- is there any point in having someone you own by the time it potentially becomes a money pit? The ideal garage for me is a modern car for everyday use and a classic car for fun days (and a nice classic is clearly the car you want to own).
An Audi Allroad can be had for £250ish pounds a month (£300ish if you count initial payment) for 2 years- isn't any other similar car going to cost the same or more to buy?
Meanwhile, realise it doesn't work for everyone.
I'm a car guy, & I always end up forming emotional attachments to my cars, even modern ones which are supposed to be just 'tools' to get about. Leasing will never be for me. The same applies to renting/owning a house. If they were financially comparable long-term id still want to buy. Then I own it, it's mine, & that matters.
If you absolutely must have a brand new car, of relatively low specification, to drive relatively few (likely boring motorway/commuting) miles, I guess it's for you
If you absolutely must have a brand new car, of relatively low specification, to drive relatively few (likely boring motorway/commuting) miles, I guess it's for you
RSK21 said:
danllama said:
Modern cars are numb and dull. Why does it make sense to have one?
Yes that's right.
Every single one of them.
I don't know why the rest of the world hasn't cottoned on to that yet and all the manufacturers gone out of business.
k about 'steering feel' and 'driving characteristics'.Prove that I'm wrong.
Edited by danllama on Friday 20th January 09:25
Sssssshhhhhh everyone! Schmucks signing leases on fully-loaded big-engined cars helps the rest of us...
Yes it's financially retarded but the more people who buy an E63 now, the cheaper it will be in a few years when i want a used one. I want all the toys too.
I'm too tight to lease a car - money is for spending but last time i looked it was going to be £800ish per month to lease a decent Merc, and that feels like a waste.
Yes it's financially retarded but the more people who buy an E63 now, the cheaper it will be in a few years when i want a used one. I want all the toys too.
I'm too tight to lease a car - money is for spending but last time i looked it was going to be £800ish per month to lease a decent Merc, and that feels like a waste.
A thread as such appears on here every week at least, i'm sure.
Everyone likes to do things differently. Whether it does make sense or not, you can't/shouldn't force people into telling them how they should run/own/finance/buy/have a car. That's their decision.
Regardless of who is getting a financially better proposition, cars depreciate and will cost and lose you money, with the obvious exceptions of course.
Everyone likes to do things differently. Whether it does make sense or not, you can't/shouldn't force people into telling them how they should run/own/finance/buy/have a car. That's their decision.
Regardless of who is getting a financially better proposition, cars depreciate and will cost and lose you money, with the obvious exceptions of course.
To be fair, i think comparing a Lease on a premium car against buying a snotter is hardly a comparison, as i no doubt like many would rather spend my daily/weekly grind behind the wheel of something i enjoy driving rather than making do with something i don't.
To use a simple comparative, i think the lease vs. buy works extremely well when you look at the many bargains on the market which mfctrs use to get the cars out on the road. Examples include the F10 M5, C/E63 AMG's & Golf R's, in every case if acquired at the right time the leasing/hiring argument is a no brainer as your payment outlay would not even cover 75% of the depreciation on these cars, so against buying them leasing wins hands down.
I jumped on one of the cheap F10 M5 deals & my total outlay including advanced payment will have been £24k over the 36mths. Now the car has a few extras so list would have been just shy of £80k but let's say i'd have negotiated a £15k cash discount & left the showroom having paid £65k. The car at best will sell at 3yrs old with 40k miles for £35k & at worst £30k so i've saved like for like a minimum of £5k over that time & at best £10k. That doesn't factor in the cost of money relative to the £65k cash i'd have shelled out which again at best i could say get 4% on per annum if invested sensibly & thus you have another £7-8k in my pocket over the 3yrs.
To use a simple comparative, i think the lease vs. buy works extremely well when you look at the many bargains on the market which mfctrs use to get the cars out on the road. Examples include the F10 M5, C/E63 AMG's & Golf R's, in every case if acquired at the right time the leasing/hiring argument is a no brainer as your payment outlay would not even cover 75% of the depreciation on these cars, so against buying them leasing wins hands down.
I jumped on one of the cheap F10 M5 deals & my total outlay including advanced payment will have been £24k over the 36mths. Now the car has a few extras so list would have been just shy of £80k but let's say i'd have negotiated a £15k cash discount & left the showroom having paid £65k. The car at best will sell at 3yrs old with 40k miles for £35k & at worst £30k so i've saved like for like a minimum of £5k over that time & at best £10k. That doesn't factor in the cost of money relative to the £65k cash i'd have shelled out which again at best i could say get 4% on per annum if invested sensibly & thus you have another £7-8k in my pocket over the 3yrs.
Dr Jekyll said:
1) Buy used.
2) Pay cash.
3) Remember nobody will think better of you because of your car choice.
Good way of looking at it.2) Pay cash.
3) Remember nobody will think better of you because of your car choice.
I was recently thinking of chucking £12k or so towards replacing my middle aged E500 with something more "fitting" to my professional image.
I never notice "car judgement" in London but whenever I drive out of London to the home counties and park at the HQ I'm surrounded by shiny lease-mobiles. To a certain extent you can be judged on how "successful" you are and my 211 is looking just a tiny bit too old to play that particular game.
Then I got a redundancy letter and I'm immediately delighted to have a fully paid off V8 waft-mobile with all the toys at my disposal and no debt to service.
Might park it round the corner if I go for a job interview though.
LOL.
It's highly likely that the best deal out there, bar none, will be a lease, if:
1. You like to change your cars regularly (it's always cheaper to buy them and hold them for a long time until they become unreliable - probably the best way being to start with something nearly new and look after it, given the risk that there is nothing more expensive than a not-quite-that-cheap car that keeps going wrong);
2. You like to drive something new and cosmetically perfect, so you'd fix any issues that arose;
3. You don't have the skills or time to fix any problems yourself;
4. The cash value of the car is somewhere between £8k and £40k, with the occasional Audi A8 and the like also providing good deals;
5. You only do low to average mileage - above 15k p.a. and flat rates for calculating mileage start to get expensive relative to depreciation, even if they're more reasonable at lower mileages;
6. You don't care whether you drive an A4/3 Series/C-Class etc. (You might care about driving a Micra vs. an Audi Allroad) but not within a rough size and performance category.
7. You're confident that all of these will hold true throughout the term.
Many people who buy cars, even when not all of the above, stitch themselves up far worse than a typical lease deal, even when they buy with cash. Similarly, I get no intrinsic value out of depreciation, fuel, road tax, or maintenance. Apart from fuel, my lease pays for all of those - and if I'm getting 45 mpg out of my petrol A4, but a 10-year-old gets 35 mpg, I'm getting a decent contribution towards that as well. What I do value is the convenience and transportation that a car provides.
A former boss had an Audi RS6 that was eight years old when he got it. It cost him £15k in maintenance alone for two years, even though he only "lost" £10k on depreciation. Had he leased a brand new Mercedes E63 for £700 a month he'd have been quids in.
Twenty years ago, my dad bought a four-year-old Rover for £6,500 and by the time he'd sold it four years later, it had cost him £11k in depreciation and maintenance. He'd have done better with a new Audi A4.
Similarly, the person who posted a couple of weeks ago, spending £3k on eight year old cars and then trading them in for buttons after 18 months, and throwing hundreds at never-quite-repairing it, and the guy who's spent £4k on a broken Vauxhall Vivaro over 18 months or 2 years would be financially no worse off, and much better off in terms of time spent on his business, with a leased equivalent. An eight-year-old BMW 523i I bought for £2k ended up costing me the same overall per month as a leased, brand new Mercedes E220 cdi, when fuel, tax and maintenance were taken into account (yes, including the up-front payment).
Lots of people seem to do way better than this with old cars ... sadly I never seem to be one of them.
1. You like to change your cars regularly (it's always cheaper to buy them and hold them for a long time until they become unreliable - probably the best way being to start with something nearly new and look after it, given the risk that there is nothing more expensive than a not-quite-that-cheap car that keeps going wrong);
2. You like to drive something new and cosmetically perfect, so you'd fix any issues that arose;
3. You don't have the skills or time to fix any problems yourself;
4. The cash value of the car is somewhere between £8k and £40k, with the occasional Audi A8 and the like also providing good deals;
5. You only do low to average mileage - above 15k p.a. and flat rates for calculating mileage start to get expensive relative to depreciation, even if they're more reasonable at lower mileages;
6. You don't care whether you drive an A4/3 Series/C-Class etc. (You might care about driving a Micra vs. an Audi Allroad) but not within a rough size and performance category.
7. You're confident that all of these will hold true throughout the term.
Many people who buy cars, even when not all of the above, stitch themselves up far worse than a typical lease deal, even when they buy with cash. Similarly, I get no intrinsic value out of depreciation, fuel, road tax, or maintenance. Apart from fuel, my lease pays for all of those - and if I'm getting 45 mpg out of my petrol A4, but a 10-year-old gets 35 mpg, I'm getting a decent contribution towards that as well. What I do value is the convenience and transportation that a car provides.
A former boss had an Audi RS6 that was eight years old when he got it. It cost him £15k in maintenance alone for two years, even though he only "lost" £10k on depreciation. Had he leased a brand new Mercedes E63 for £700 a month he'd have been quids in.
Twenty years ago, my dad bought a four-year-old Rover for £6,500 and by the time he'd sold it four years later, it had cost him £11k in depreciation and maintenance. He'd have done better with a new Audi A4.
Similarly, the person who posted a couple of weeks ago, spending £3k on eight year old cars and then trading them in for buttons after 18 months, and throwing hundreds at never-quite-repairing it, and the guy who's spent £4k on a broken Vauxhall Vivaro over 18 months or 2 years would be financially no worse off, and much better off in terms of time spent on his business, with a leased equivalent. An eight-year-old BMW 523i I bought for £2k ended up costing me the same overall per month as a leased, brand new Mercedes E220 cdi, when fuel, tax and maintenance were taken into account (yes, including the up-front payment).
Lots of people seem to do way better than this with old cars ... sadly I never seem to be one of them.
Edited by CYMR0 on Friday 20th January 10:05
hora said:
A 2010 car says 'I'm struggling'.
A brand new Allroad says 'hey I'm doing ok'.
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted. A brand new Allroad says 'hey I'm doing ok'.
The richest guy I know drives a 2004 Focus diesel. He bought it new and he will drive it until it becomes unreliable. The Focus replaced 1990 Sierra that he'd also owned from new. Cars aren't his thing at all. As long as it gets from A to B and is comfortable, he's not bothered.
He could go out tomorrow and buy any car he wanted for cash, but he's not interested in cars, so why would he? His house though, is something else. As are the holidays he takes.
It's all about what you value.
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