As we approach the RIDE’s “Second Birthday”, I have some news to share with the rest of you. There’s some good news and no-so-great news, so I will just break it down to you all.

The Good

My wife is a proud new owner of a black 2010 Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg. She decided to pull the trigger toward the end of February and went ahead and rolled all inception fees in, making it a “Sign-n-Drive” deal. The damage? $0 due at signing, $359 per month ($317 before tax). The MF was 0.00089 and the residual was 57%, both very good numbers for leasing. MSRP $24065, Sale price $22946. This gets a 1.2 rating on my lease calculator, which is good, but not great. This was a fairly challenging vehicle to negotiate because Edmunds’ estimates where WAY OFF! I still managed $300 below “dealer” invoice, but the negotiation was a bit difficult when your MSRP and Invoice numbers vary dramatically from what the dealer has. Take this for instance, the Edmunds MSRP was $24,240 (about 175 higher than the actual MSRP). Then the invoice price on Edmunds was $22,931 (dealer invoice was $23203). In the end, I think we made out alright in this transaction so I don’t think we’ll be losing any sleep at night.

So what became of the Acura TSX? We still have it and my wife is racking up some miles before turning it in. Yes, there is a little bit of overlap in payments, but its fine since we still get to drive the TSX and there will be plenty of free miles later on the Jetta for us to go on road trips with. It really baffles the mind when I think about folks who roll in the last few payments on their existing car and don’t get to drive it anymore. Why? Do they realize that those payments have tax and interest in them already? And when you roll them into a new lease, you are paying interest and tax AGAIN!?! I don’t get it…

The Wall posting for the Wolfsburg to come after the car get’s it’s free detailing. I couldn’t negotiate free oil changes since VW includes all that stuff on all VWs so we got a free detail and wax.

The Not So Good

My parents are in town for the next month or two, which is great since I haven’t seen them for over year. Unfortunately, this also means that my time will be limited when it comes to the bloggingf. The good news is that I don’t plan to layoff on the lease rate search and posting. However, personalized help will probably suffer since I will have less free time (plus I’ve been getting hammered at work with some pretty big projects).

Hurray for Year Two!

For those who have stuck around and visited on and off for the past two years, I thank you! For those who actually clicked on advertising links, I thank you even more! The overall health of the site is still not too bad even though monthly revenue as dropped about 66% last month. I think this is partly attributed to my absence in January but it’s mainly because LeaseCompare has been sucking up a lot clicks away from my other ads. LOL. I’m chucking this up as the “fee” for having Tarry’s seal of approval.

Anyway, welcome to year two of RIDE with G, hope you’ve found my research and comments useful and entertaining. Stay tuned for March’s lease rates!