Car lease v purchase?

[llareggub]

Does anyone have any views on leasing a car rather than buying a car?

I have never done it before but it is looking very attractive to me. I'd rather not throw my savings at something which will depreciate so quickly.

Any experiences? Good or bad please!

IMHO I wouldn't bu a new car anyway, as either way your throwing your money away.

Basically once you start you will be payiong £x per month every month and NEVER have anything to show for it

Hi, like anyting there are good points and bad points. Leasing is fine, pay a monthly sum and usually you have maintenance included. At the end of the lease you dont own the car.

With HP you obviously pay (usually a higher monthly sum) but at the end of the agreement own the car. Some dealers at the moment are doing 0% finance and so this is quite an attractive option. You can then part/x the car for another or sell it privately.

Some deals like PCP's have low payments every month but are tied into a baloon payment and milegage clauses.s

It really depends on what you need the car for, how long you plan to keep the car for and what your circs are...

Does this help at all?

Good point Crunchie, but I do need a car for work. I look at it as the payment for getting to where I need to go, a bit like a bus pass I guess.

It need not be new necessarily, although I think a lease car would be. I just need something economical on fuel, big enough for a buggy and relatively environmentally friendly.

Karen99, thanks. What is a balloon payment? I don't really care about cars, I am not really bothered what I get so long as it fulfills the criteria I mentioned in a previous post.

A balloon payment is usually a payment at the end of the HP/PCP agreement...for example you could take a car on a PCP at something like, pay deposit, have montly payments and then pay a final payment (balloon payment) so that you own the car. Sometimes the balloon payment can be quite high.

I see. With the scheme I looked at there was that option. I think it unlikely that I pay the final figure to own the car. I just don't want a large, up front capital expenditure. I'd rather keep my savings to myself and spend my work car allowance each month. It won't fully cover it but it is a large chunk.

If you have a work car allowence, isn't there an option to 'buy' a company car??

Or look at how much you will be getting each month and get a good value/quality 2nd hand car. You will pay approx same each month and own the car.

For instance a Picasso (our car) low mileage, diesl (so economical) large boot etc £200 a month x 36 months = £7200 Yo would get a good one for that. citroen

I would do this.

I get a £3000 car allowebce via woek and when our car dies (it is a Y reg and has 125,000 miles) then I will buy another one - or the next model up !

we looked at this fairly recently and came to the conclusion that it was more cost effective to take out a loan than to use our savings.

leasing was more expensive option.

Hi I have previously leased a car twice (did it privately, no company car allowance or anything) through Jam jar cars. TBH it was a better deal about 6 years ago when I started doing it but it has got a lot more expensive recently.

It depends on your needs really. Both times I leased a vauxhall corsa, which was the cheapest and fine when we didn't have DD but she was born in the middle of the second cars 3 year lease period and we struggled with fitting anything in the boot really. One we had got the buggy in (nothing fancy, only a maclaren, there was hardly room for anything else!)

Rough ideas of costs for monthly lease- not including maintainence were ; 2001 £121 per month (inccluded car tax) then the next lease in 2004 this had gone up to £139 per month and when I looked into doing it again this time even for just a corsa(which was obviously not suitable) it was going to be about £160 per month at least, which I could no longer afford on part-time wages. So we bought a 2.5 year old astra off a family member (ie got a pretty good deal on it)!

Anyway, basically the good points were that there was not a large deposit and I didn't feel like I was wasting my savings and I got a brand new car delivered after three years,(never owned either of the cars nor did I have to make a large final payment- the cost of leasing bascially worked out that I had paid about 2/3rds of the value of the car, which was slightly less than what you would lose anyway in depreciation) but as I have said (I think!) as our needs changed it was no longer financially the better option.

HTH

I've looked into leasing a couple of times but it worked out prohibitively expensive for someone doing high mileage. Fine if you are doing less than 10k a year.

to echo what Quattrocentro has said I only did low mileage (if you go over you agreed mileage limit it costs a fortune)

I don't drive very far. Mainly 2 mile round trip to work/childminders each day. I average 20 business miles per month and make a 350 mile round trip every quarter or so. Even factoring 20 miles per week of weekend driving around I'm well under the threshold.

Thanks for the information and advice. I have found a good deal and I am going to investigate further.

Actually I will also be investigating whether I actually need a car, given my limited mileage!