How do I know if I am getting the best deal for a lease vehicle?

Everyone else is saying the same thing, but leasing a car is the worst way to have cars, especially for someone as young as you. The way to calculate the "best deal" is by how much wealth is lost over the length of time that you use the car.

If you're leasing, you have no equity in the car so a $219 lease for 39 months means you're losing $8541 over around 3 years.

Compare this to buying a ~2013 used car for around $10,000. Even if you need to take out a loan and end up actually paying closer to $11,000 for it, after 3 years it will still be worth $6,000, which means you only lost ~$4,000k in wealth(slightly more if you have a loan).

Over 6 years, leasing is even worse. If you lease twice in a row, you end up losing over $17,000 in wealth. If you had bought that used car, it would probably only be worth $4k or $5k, but you only paid $11k for it so you'd only have lost $6,000 in wealth instead of $17,000, which is what it costs you to lease. That's over $10,000 difference between owning slightly used vs leasing, just over 6 years.

You need to run the numbers and make sure you fully understand how much leasing is costing you compared to buying something a few years old.

My recommendation is buy 3-4 years old car

/r/personalfinance Thread