[SML] OT -Vehicle Leasing

[Dale Farmer]

On 10/2/2014 6:36 PM, Stephen Rees via Stagecraft wrote:
> I confess to being a babe in the woods when it comes to auto leasing.
> Have never done it before. Always paid cash up front.  Now this.
>
> Supposedly, if I trade in my gas Smart car on a new all electric Smart
> car, I can get $6000 for the old one, pay $2500 for lease startup on
> the new one, and then pay for the 36 mo, $89/month lease from the
> residue. Excluding the cost of electrify for charging the battery
> every 70 miles, this sounds too good to be true. A full charge at
> $.12/KwH costs about $3.00. Premium gas here is about $4.00/gal. This
> equates to about half the cost of a gas model for "fuel". What have I
> missed in this equation? Pitfalls of leasing?? Curious for any pros
> and cons the assembled horde might care to share.  TIA.
>
> Steve Rees
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> For list information see <http://stagecraft.theprices.net/>
> Stagecraft mailing list
> Stagecraft at theatrical.net
> http://theatrical.net/mailman/listinfo/stagecraft_theatrical.net
>
Vehicle leasing makes sense for a business, since all the lease costs 
are IIRC, tax deductible in some way.  For an individual, no tax 
deduction.   Plus the lease companies setup the lease terms in such a 
way that you have to pay them a large lump of money at the end of the 
lease, and you walk away with nothing, while they own a car that they 
can sell on the used market for a big percentage of the new price, in 
addition to the profit they just took from you.

    Friend of mine leased a car.   Used it for his daily commuter 
drive.  After the first year of the two year lease, he noticed that he 
had maxed out the lease milage.  He crunched the numbers, and figured 
out it was more cost effective to park for the remainder of the lease 
term and buy a $2k beater from the local very used car lot and drive 
that for the remainder of the lease term.

   On the other hand, my daily driver is a car I bought used after a 
lease.  I got a 2 year old car with only 28k miles on it for half the 
new car price.  Only complaint I had with the thing was that the dealer 
poured what must have been half a gallon of cheap perfume inside the day 
before I picked it up.   I drove it with the windows wide open for all 
of november and december, unless it was raining or snowing that day.  I 
could still smell that nasty shit on hot summer days the second summer I 
owned it.

   --Dale