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The best candidates for a lease are people who would normally get a new car every 2-3 years, and are not particularly concerned about the higher long-term costs of that practice. Luxury-car buyers are usually good candidates for leases because automakers frequently offer subsidized leases with reduced down payments and dramatically lower monthly payments.
If you’re tempted to get one of those new electric cars, be sure to lease it. Their batteries currently cost about $15,000 and you wouldn’t want to be stuck with that bill.

Before you move on to the other chapters, be sure to read the following terms and definitions so you will be able to understand the unusual language of leasing.
Acquisition fee: Fee charged by the leasing company to buy a vehicle and set up the lease. Sometimes negotiable. Also called “initiation fee.” Typical charge: $450 Cap cost or Capitalized cost: The price of the car; what the leasing company is paying the dealer for the car. This is almost always negotiable. The lower this figure is, the lower your payments will be.
Cap reduction: Any down payment, trade-in, or rebate that reduces the cap cost (total amount leased). A larger cap reduction should reduce your monthly payment and cut your financing costs.
Closed-end lease: Leasing company assumes all risk for drop in value due to excess depreciation. Customer can just walk away at end of lease. (Preferred type)
Depreciation: The difference between the net cap cost and the residual. Represents loss of market value. Disposition fee: Fee charged at the end of a lease for turning in the vehicle. Negotiate this before signing the lease—only agree to pay an acquisition fee or a disposition fee, not both. Typical charge: $200-400 Early termination penalty: The price you’ll pay to end your lease early. Ask what this is in advance: it’s usually thousands of dollars.

Excess mileage charge: Additional charge at the end of a lease for exceeding the mileage limit. Usually 15 cents per mile. Watch out for low-mileage leases— this charge could end up costing over a thousand dollars.
Gap insurance: Policy to cover the difference between the balance owed on a lease and normal insurance coverage. Needed in case of theft or total loss due to accident. This should be included in the lease—insist on it.
Initiation fee: Same as “acquisition fee.
Lease rate: Monthly rate charged by leasing company, similar to interest rate. Includes both interest and profit. Lease rate = [net cap cost + residual] x money factor
Lessee: The one who is leasing a vehicle (the customer).
Lessor: The lender/leasing company.
Mileage allowance: The number of miles you can put on a leased car without incurring a penalty.
Money factor: Used to determine finance charges. This is usually negotiable—it should not be greater than the rate on loans. Money factor = [annual interest rate ÷ 24]
MSRP: Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. This is almost always negotiable (except on Saturn vehicles).
Open-end lease: Customer assumes risk for excess depreciation, might have to buy vehicle for more than it’s worth, or sell at a loss and pay the leasing company the difference. (Very risky—avoid this type.)
Purchase option price: The amount that you can buy the vehicle for at the end of the lease. It’s usually the same as the residual and it is negotiable.
Residual value: The estimated wholesale value of the vehicle at the end of the lease; used to calculate lease payments. (A higher residual should result in lower payments.) It’s usually the same as the purchase option price, and it is negotiable.
Subsidized lease: An automaker’s lease with an inflated residual and/or reduced interest rate that results in lower monthly payments.
Term: Length of lease. Don’t lease longer than 3 years, or excess wear-and-tear charges could be expensive.

As the founder of a large lease-training company once said, there is an opportunity to take advantage of the customer in a lease. Since poorly-written consumer finance regulations did not require disclosure of important lease information (including the vehicle price or the interest rate), leasing companies and dealers didn’t provide it. This gave unscrupulous salesmen a great opportunity to commit outrageous acts of fraud with little chance of being discovered. Or so they thought.

While the number of people leasing was growing in leaps and bounds, the volume of consumer complaints was also picking up steam. At first, it appeared to be just a few isolated stories of people who said they were misled and cheated on lease transactions, but it soon began to look like a more serious problem.
By 1992, some consumer protection agencies were beginning to get hundreds of complaints about new-car leasing, which led to the formation of a task force by the attorneys general from 22 states. A number of investigations were started, and dozens of lawsuits have been filed.
What were the complaints about? Many of them were about salesmen who had secretly raised the price of a car (or the APR on a loan) after quoting a lower one. And some people said they received no credit for their trade- ins, while others received less than the amount that was negotiated. Similarly, down payments and rebates were often not properly credited. (In some cases, salesmen had secretly increased the cap cost to cancel out the effect of trade-ins and down payments.) A common complaint of elderly buyers was that they were switched to leases without their knowledge.
The following investigations and lawsuits illustrate the numerous ways that people have been victimized by leasing scams. In all of the legal cases, most of the victims did not even realize they had been cheated.

The worst candidate for a lease: someone who can’t afford to pay an early termination penalty. For this reason, leasing is not a prudent choice for someone who’s financially strapped. (They should buy a good used car.)
The second worst candidate: someone who wants to end up owning the vehicle. Buying a car at the end defeats the purpose of leasing, which is to drive a new car every 2-3 years with no trade-in hassles. And if a lease deal was a good one to begin with (i.e., low monthly payments with a high residual), the car usually won’t be worth buying at the residual/purchase option price. Other poor candidates: people who drive a lot of miles (over 15,000 miles per year), and those who fail to take good care of their cars.

Some advantage of leasing are, short-term leasing offers the following advantages: less total cash tied up in a vehicle, lower down payments and monthly payments, no trade-in or selling inconvenience, and protection against big losses due to depreciation. And if you can get a lease that has a large factory subsidy, you could end up with a good deal.
disadvantages are If you decide to sell the car or turn it in before the end of the lease, you’ll have to pay a substantial penalty for early termination. This includes accidental termination, such as a stolen or totaled car, so be sure to get gap insurance to cover the amount owed that exceeds your insurance.
The early termination penalty is usually the difference between the unpaid depreciation and the auction value of the car, but in some cases, you may be required to make all the remaining payments. Depending on how early you terminate, this could be as much as $5,000 on a $20,000 car. If you can’t afford this, you shouldn’t be leasing.
Leasing usually requires a $100,000/$300,000 liability policy, which may cost a lot more than the level of insurance you’re used to carrying. You’ll have to pay extra fci excess mileage, poor maintenance, and physical damage (unusual wear) at the end of the lease. And your total cost of driving (long-term) will usually be higher on a lease than a conventional purchase, especially if the purchased car is kept for at least 4 years.
Finally, unless you decide to end the renewal cycle by purchasing, you will always be making car payments. If you like “paying things off,” leasing is not for you.