Depends if your priority is to be driving a new car all the time or to drive for as cheaply as possible over time.
If you want the latter, buying outright and keeping the car as for a good few years will always be cheaper.
Do any calculations over the long term of perhaps 6 years. Don’t just think about monthly affordability but total cost of motoring.
If you buy outright, as you know from doing it before, you do need to have some money available to spend on serving, basic maintenance and the odd bill. For some people, that’s too scary because they basically live hand to mouth and the thought of a bill for £500 to get the car through servicing and MOT at 5 years old horrified them. What they forget is they’ve spent far more than £500 extra over the years on lease payments compared to buying outright. But it depends on your financial discipline. You can pay monthly…but ultimately you pay more for that.
In my view, it’s worth buying a car that’s 3-5 years old that comes with a decent warranty, and then keeping it for 5-8 years. Sometimes you’ll find you get 10 years out of it perfectly happily.
Some people also seem to think any car more than 2 years old can’t be relied upon. They have been led to believe that only the poor drive older cars and that everyone these days deserves a new car. But the reality is that those new cars aren’t actually affordable to many and although they manage the monthly payment, the impact ontontiehr areas of their life is significant, even if they don’t spot it. It can mean they can’t build up a mortgage deposit, or their oension contributions are low and they need to work an extra 5 years, or they can’t save and end up stuck in a smaller house than they’d like.
Look at your finances in the round. Think about the full costs of the car, but also the consequences of if you choose to go for lease payments about the other impacts if that in your finances, not just now but also in 3 years when the leas ends. Lots of people find they thought they’d just lease for 3 years and then stop, but actually once they’re in these schemes, never build up the savings to buy a car outright again and then are essentially trapped in leasing long term. It’s all worth thinking about.