I haven't seen anybody address the cost of financing the lease vs outright purchase.

Many moons ago I signed a 48 month lease on a 2 year old Ford Contour. Cosworth headed V6 with a 5 speed. Absolute hoot to drive.

Salesman gives me the sales pitch on lease vs purchase and to the effect of you have all the car but you only pay for half of it. The part of your brain that still believes in free lunch signs the contract. $250 ish a month for 48 months with IIRC a $7kish residual.

I go home and I'm looking over what I had just signed and something doesn't add up. It was like a $12k plus tax car but the cost to finance was approaching $4k. I run the numbers through a calculator and that's about double. So I call them up and say I think there is an error and then he tells me well you're only paying for half the car but you're financing all of it. So much for the free lunch...

So I ask if it's to late to convert this to a purchase and he's good with that but he prefers leases because as has been pointed out, he gets another shot at me at the end. So long story short it cost me $100 a month more to buy it, the bank financing was a little less percentage wise and when I made the last payment, I owned it for the $4800 I paid extra over 48 months instead of $7k.

I'm in the leasing is the most expensive way to have a car in the driveway camp. If you can't afford to buy that new car you want, you should just make peace with it and buy the one you can actually afford.

Kevin