Lease or finance, decided without a calculator
Three questions about how you drive can settle lease versus finance faster than a spreadsheet.
People agonise over lease-versus-finance as though it were a maths problem. It mostly isn't. Three questions settle it faster than any spreadsheet.
How long do you keep a car? If the honest answer is three years, financing means you will be trading out of a loan before you have built much equity, which is where negative equity comes from. If the honest answer is eight years, leasing means paying for the most expensive part of a car's life over and over and owning nothing at the end.
How far do you drive? A lease is priced around a mileage allowance. Exceeding it is not a catastrophe, but it is a per-mile charge you agreed to in advance, and a long commute can quietly erase the difference between the two options.
Do you want to stop thinking about it? A leased car is under warranty for its whole life with you, and it ends on a known date with a known process. A financed car eventually becomes yours, with the repair bills that come with age, and it ends whenever you decide.
Where the numbers do matter is in the details that are easy to miss: what is due at signing, what the term is, and what the car is expected to be worth at the end. Those three move a lease payment far more than the sticker price does.