Car leasing

The warnings about the next financial crash on the back of car leasing are a bit worrying, M0nica, and I have been concerned about that too. DS was buying a second-hand car recently and was offered a leasing deal. He just wants a car to get to work and intends to keep it until it needs too many repairs and then buy another second-hand one. The dealer said that in that case a leasing deal was not going to be of use to him, and stopped pushing it, fortunately.

Thank you all! I will be looking into it. As we are both in our 70's I feel we could do with a reliable car and none of the problems we've always lived with driving elderly vehicles.

Several members of my family have personal leased cars and are very happy with the scheme. The big motor dealers like Ford, Honda and Kia have reputable schemes with affordable smaller cars too and you can buy at low cost a servicing agreement. A nice new car every few years - lovely.

I will say it may be tempting to lease something larger and more expensive than you would normally buy and I know some of my staff in the past jumped straight in to Mercedes and BMW and underestimated their costs.

We think it's a good idea as we know exactly what the costs are going to be. We overestimate our annual mileage which puts the cost up very slightly and means we avoid the extra mileage costs.

Of course you have to be sure it is affordable and not fall into the trap of having a bigger, faster, better car than you can really afford.

Ther have been a lot of warnings in the papers that these car leasing schemes are the next financial disaster waiting to strike. I think it is to do with people being lured into unaffordable burdens of household debt. There have also been complaints about excessive 'repair' charges when cars are returned at the end of the lease period www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/10/are-car-loans-driving-us-towards-the-next-financial-crash

Have a look at this site for the nuts and bolts info on these deals.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/car-finance/car-leasing

I think it is a good scheme if you are the sort of people who want to have a new car every 2/3 years.

It seems to be the done thing nowadays. My children all do it. It means they get a new car every couple of years. The only downside, was my DIL had scraped the alloys and they had to cover that.
I don't really know the ins and outs of it all, but I'm sure many on GN will be able to advise.

We have done it for the last three or maybe 4 cars . It worked perfectly well with no m.o.t's , lowish payments and a new car every 2 or 3 years but the last time it ran out hubby decided it was the last as now we are a bit older and he's thinking of retirement soon as don't know how things are going to be financially so we bought the 2 year old car at final payment stage and don't regret it . I
It's not something I would go into again but we don't regret doing it as it was hassle free ..If you can afford it do it but the car is never actually yours in reality.