Finance

What???????

You want to lease and put mods onto a car that potentially won't be yours at the end of the lease???


I can't give you a payment estimate without the interest rate. And it would be an estimate without knowing the tax, title, license, and fees.

$14,000 @ 6% for 36 months OAC would put you into the $425 range.

DON"T DO IT!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to apologize for my original posting. I jumped the gun this time. I just got finished going through the lease scam with my 22 year old son trying to convince him not to lease. It will waste his money. He finally saw the light and got a loan. And I think you could possibly be using terms interchangeably. Those being FINANCING and LEASING. It sounds like you could be really trying to say FINANCING. Of course they are 2 different animals.

Again, I offer an apology for my original response.

Here is my advice and I'll shut up.

1st, if you can, pay cash for the car and drive home.
2nd, if you can't pay cash for the car, get a loan (finance).
3rd, AVOID leasing at all costs. I can not think of one reason an INDIVIDUAL should lease a car.

If you lease a car, you're not supposed to technically do anything to it that isn't factory OEM products, apart from tint. You can mod it, but you better save the parts to put them back in the end.

Stop attacking the guy, there's nothing wrong with leasing a car, but I do agree that putting $12k down on a lease is way too much. Also modding a car you will turn in 3 years isn't something you really want to do.

Hey darlin'

No shame in asking your question, regardless of age. Here is an amortization calculator that will work for you.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/popcalc2.asp

I, personally, do not agree with leasing. Most of the time at the end of the term you have a substantial buy-back or pay-off upon mileage calculation and wear-and-tear. If at all possible I would get a loan. It will sit better on your credit, even if you have to get a HIGH rate to get the loan. If starting out or reestablishing credit, sometimes you just have to bit the bullet and get a high rate. You have a substantial amount for the down payment. You may want to run some different ideas on the amortization calculator and see if the payment at a hight rate...say 12% and above will run in a monthly payment. Put about $6,000 down and put the residual in an interest bearing account in case something goes wrong and you need to make a few payments.

If you want some more help and not display it in an open forum..PM me..I'll be more than happy to help you run some payment scenarios.

Jennifer

If you can put 12k down, you should buy it, IMO.

FYI....He gave me the skinny via PM. He is a very intelligent young man. He has it covered and has ran the scenerios. Placed a lot of thought into this.

His circumstances would actually dictate the lease as being the optimal way to go for now. Man! You know, I forgot what it was like to be starting out as a young person and I wouldn't want to try it now in this credit-forsaken society!

Jennifer

leasing can be a good choice - we are leasing my wife's van right now - honda had a special going about a year ago with a 24 mo/24k mile lease for $289 a month. yes, the lease end buy out amount is ridiculous; but i'm not going to take it. for $100+ a month less that what she was paying for her '01 chevy venture, she gets two years driving a top of the line van. (plus it has a dvd playing to keep the munchkins quiet!)

in my opinion leasing is a bad idea on a new mustang. your monthly payments might be a couple hundred less than a finance payment, but you have to restrict yourself on mileage, if you get any dents or scratches on the car you have to pay a buttload to have them repaired, etc. you are paying ford to rent the car and everything about the lease favors them. if you have $12k to put down on one go ahead and finance the rest. over 3 years you will always owe less than what it's worth, so you could sell it at any time. with a lease you are stuck with the car for the entire term of the lease, and everyone i know that has ever leased has almost always gone over the mileage or had to drive the car on a restricted basis to stay under their mileage allowance.

My 0.02$ worth...

I'm on my 3rd lease now. First was a '98 Volvo V70, 3 yr lease w/ 20,000Km per year. Did a little more kms than expected, but paid only 600 CDN for extra (6,000 km @ $0.10) when I gave back the car in June 2001. In '99 (one year into my lease!), my daughter decided to draw a nice big sun on the hood of my car with a sharp rock... right down to the primer, with gashes 1 to 2mm wide. When I caught her on the hood doing her thing, she slid off still pushing the rock on the car: the sun turned into a sunflower with a nice stem down the right front fender. Would you believe it, I never was charged a cent for this!

Second car is the current one: Acura TL type S. This one I leased with a higher mileage (24,000km / year). After 4 years I'm at 66,800 km, and I'm giving this car back this week- I'm picking my 3rd lease, which is the '05 GT. Again, no problem with the inspection firm, even with small brake mods (slotted and perf disks front).

It seems that the lease scams are mostly over now. Normal wear and tear is accepted: bumpers small scratches, stone chips on the front of the hood, door dings (as long as they are small)... no problem! Of course you have to keep your car in tip top shape (the biggest issue being the tires, I gather from my encounters with the inspection firms), but if you're a car nut, you usually do anyway! And usually, don't we always do a lot of things to the car we want to sell prior to selling it anyway?

Of course, I lease my cars with minimal or no cash. I actually always give about 2,000 CDN, but that's because I'm stupid as most of my friends / collegues lease with no cash except the security deposits. Of course, I never buy the car at the end of the lease. Point taken: my TL-S purchase value was $CDN 42,009 in aug. 2001 (it was a 2002 model year), and the buy-back at the end of the lease is an astonding 21,730 CDN + tx (over 50% value retained after 4 year - way better than the Mustang : i have only 51% after 3 years on the lease I'm getting!). However, due to the fact that there is now a new model, the real value of my car after 4 years is probably under 20,000 CDN even with the low mileage. It is really not worth buying it.

Now, why do I lease? I'm a Sales VP doing pretty good, so I could afford to buy, no? I lease for mainly 4 reasons:

1) I don't want to keep my car more than 4 years (actually the Acura lease felt too long!)
2) I get a car perk that is added to my paycheck. I therefore pay my income taxes on the car allowance. under the taxation laws of Quebec and Canada, it is actually easier to deduct a lease than amortize the purchase and do the deductions for the interests paid on the loan (if any), which means I get a nice tax refund at the end of the year, while the other way (buy and amortize) could mean that I have ot pay something once I sell the car (if the sales value is higher than what was left after amortization, its considered taxable income) as we always are more agressive amortizing the car value;
3) Helps push a new car to the missus every 3 to 4 years
4) I can't stand my car with big damages so I keep them clean and in tip top shape (except for sunflowers drawings, which was actually funny to show to people).

I did some calculations a while ago, comparing a lease to a buy with little or no cash with a resale or return after 4 years, and it did come to about the same (less than cdn 1,000 higher for the lease). If the car will be a keeper (more than 4 years) or if you will do a lot of mileage, then a lease is not for you. if your financial (read job) situation is rocky, it is not for you either, as you can't get out of a lease as you can unload a car and pay off the loan. Penalties are quite steep when you want to get out of a lease, and it could affect your credit ratings. Actually, this is why I go with reasonable cars instead of BMWs or MB. You never know when bad luck will hit you!

In my case, our second car (the one that sleeps in the garage) is another Volvo: XC V70 (yes, the awd sleeps in the garage, while my fwd is stuck in the inclined snow covered driveway!!!) which we use as a family car during the week-ends, especially during the ski season. This car is a keeper, and we bought it. We plan keeping it for 6 to 8 years - we do approximately 15,000 km / year on this one.

Of course a lease means that I will never make big mods (except brakes and wheels/tires) as it would be stupid to give these away to Ford Finance... Mind you, I'm not fond of making mods that could void my warranty either, so I would do mods in the 3rd year, not the first (especially since this is a first model-year).

Now, another 24 hours before picking up my new pony... Hope I can sleep tonight!

I'm not anti-lease at all, but you dealt w/ a liberal inspector on your Acura. When I turned in an immaculate 01 Audi A-6 w/ less than allowed mileage, they tried to get me for $150 extra because of 1 small door ding. There were no other signs of wear at all. Of course I had it taken out for $75 before turning it in, but it ticked me off that they were looking that closely, and they did not take into account the perfect condition of the car.

Based on my past experiences a short term lease have always worked out fine as they have made me keep the vehicle longer than I normally would . I would think the 12K down would be able to buy out the 3 year lease on a nicely equipped GT. We have alot of Lincoln customers that do that here, make a one time lease payment and drive the car for 2 years with no payments, at the end of two years they pick out the next one, write the check and away they go. It makes sense not to pay the full boat sales tax if you are going to flip the car in two years.

jtthirdeye said:

with a lease you are stuck with the car for the entire term of the lease

Click to expand...

Not really. I've gotten out of many leases early. Basically, you need to buy out the lease to do this - and then you're trading in the vehicle. Mileage is irrelevant at this point.

To get the buyout amount, you take the lease-end purchase amount + the number of remaining payments. This is what it takes to buy out the lease. Treat it the same as paying off a loan early.