Welcome back to yet another fun-filled and exciting month of leasing! I too have began researching on what my next lease will be even though it’s still a bit early in the game for me. It can’t be helped I guess. This year has been fairly kind to lessees with a decent number of good leases throughout the year, so I couldn’t help myself from keeping my eyes out for something to replace my G. Anyway, lets get down to business!
Lease Calculator 3.0 is LIVE!
As I mentioned last month, I have been working on a new version of the lease calculator in order to enhance your research experience. Here’s a rundown of what I changed:
Fee Itemization removed, Added “Fees to Roll In”
I didn’t think there was a point to having these fees listed separately (its not like the dealer does that anyway), so to simplify things, all you need to do is decide whether you want to pay them up front or roll them into your lease. However, you still need to have your dealer itemize your fees to be on the safe side.
Cap Reduction removed
Cap reduction is generally a bad idea when it comes to leasing, so no point having that anymore. When faced with the decision to put money down in order to lower your payments, opt for Multiple Security Deposits instead (if the bank allows it).
Added “Miles per Year”
This field will be used to adjust your Deal Rating. Deals that have low payments and more miles are better than those that have similar payments but less miles. More on this later.
Added “Discount off MSRP” , Added Money Factor to APR conversion
These are just visuals for those who want to know how much of a discount they are getting and how much interest they are paying. This information should provide most people with a good way of determining whether buying is better than leasing.
Deal Rating system reworked
The deal rating system has been reworked due to the fact that it only took into consideration your base monthly payments vs the MSRP of the vehicle. For most intents and purposes, that’s not a bad system for 36-month terms. But what happens when you go with the longer or unconventional terms such as 27, 39 or 42? Or what if you are leasing at 10k instead of 15k miles per year? This new rating system attempts to address those issues by separating the payments, term and mileage allowance and giving extra consideration to the latter two factors. The payments accounts for approximately 70% of the rating while the term and mileage take 5% and 20%, respectively. So what qualifies as a good deal? Anything that’s rated 90 or higher, with the more exceptional deals exceeding 100. Anything below 90, use your judgement.
Nice work!!!! Honestly a must have if you are going to lease. Well done, G. You keep taking it up a notch with this site.
Echo that. Excellent site, and much appreciated information for some of us new bees to the world of leasing.
thanks guys!
G, the sales tax is even more useless than the cap reduction 🙂 In some states sales tax is calculated on the entire sale price and not on the amortized sum. Can you modify your calculator to take this into consideration?
I’ll give it a try. You could technically crunch out the taxes on the side and then added in as part of the “fees”. That should give you a pretty accurate estimate of what the lease would be including taxes for the entire sale price.
What happened to edmunds.com? Anyone know? Looks like it’s been removed from the internet.
G, yeah that’s what I do. The lease guide’s online calculator does the same thing, so I just put taxes and all other fees in the “included additional costs” field.
BTW, I started to really like my 2010 CC 🙂
ursus, I like the CC too, but I wish it had seating for 5. I am in need of a bigger vehicle. Haahaa.
@G
Great site keep it going, your site alone has saved my family $ in so many ways this past 2 years (5 leases) 1st is msd’s who ever heard about that finance deal? I bet 1 outta 10 but on your site most do.
FYI most dealers will not tell you about it so they won’t confirm the mf and the can pad the rate = (sharks) but with your site your molding a better smarter shopper (thankx)
G, you can squeeze 5 in your wife’s Jetta 🙂
If only it were that easy. I’m starting to get complaints about the lack of trunk size and passenger space on my coupe already. I wonder how much longer I can keep my car. Haahaa.