Should You Lease Or Own A Vehicle

When looking at your next vehicle you have two options. There are benefits to both leasing and owning a vehicle. There are also cons to both leasing and owning a vehicle. We will take a look at both options. Most of the time when you pull into a car dealership you have the option of both leasing and buying a vehicle. The dealership has options for either case. You have to choose based on how much you use the vehicle as to which one would be a better choice.

The benefit of leasing a vehicle is that the lease is for a certain period of time. Most of the time it is for three years. You would pay a certain amount each month to lease that vehicle. Once the lease is finished you could then lease a different vehicle, or sometimes you could choose to buy that vehicle once the lease period is over. There are pros and cons to leasing a vehicle. Some of the pros are if you like to drive a different car every three years then this would be perfect for you. Once your lease is finished you can select a different car to do another lease. This means that you could drive a different vehicle every three years. This is especially great if you don’t know which car you would like to have. You can try out different cars and see which one you like best. Once you have found a car that you really like, then you could opt to buy that vehicle if you don’t want to try out a different car.

The other benefit of having a new car every three years is that you always have a warranty. Most of your car dealerships offer a three year, 36,000-mile warranty on every new car. With you trading the car every three years you will always be covered under a warranty. If you are always covered under a warranty this means that you won’t ever have to spend money on car repair bills. You can drive worry-free knowing that your car will always be taken care of.

There are also some cons to leasing a car. The first con is that there is a cap on the mileage. This means that you can only drive the car for so many miles. After you have hit that cap on the mileage you have to pay for the extra miles driven. This can get very expensive as they do charge you by the miles that you have driven over the cap. This means that for every mile over they charge you which can add up very quickly. If you do travel a lot and you use your car for transportation while traveling a lease would not work for you. The other con is that the car is not yours. This means that you cannot make any changes to it. If you don’t like the color of the car you cannot change the color. If you wanted to upgrade the stereo, or put in a stereo that has Bluetooth, or GPS into the car you cannot do that. You have to leave everything in the car as it came, and you cannot change anything to it. You cannot customize it in any way. The car has to be returned the same way it was as you got it minus the normal wear and tear that comes with using the vehicle.

When you own a car it is a different story then when you lease a car. There are pros and cons to buying a car and owning it.

The pros are that you will own the car once you have paid off. Yes, you do have a car payment but you will not have one forever. Once the car is paid off you will not have a car payment anymore and you will still own the car. At the same time as you are paying the car off, once you pay off what it is worth you will start building equity in the car. This equity can be used as needed. If you have a surprise bill that is rather large but it is necessary and you do not have the money to pay for it. You can use the equity in the car to give you the money to pay for any surprises that may come your way.
The other pro to owning a car is that it is yours. You can customize it any way that you like. If you don’t like the color of the car you can have it repainted to the color that you do like. You can put all kinds of trim on the vehicle as you wish. You can change the seats or the whole interior. If you want to upgrade your stereo you can buy a new stereo and have it put into your vehicle. Once you have the car paid off you can turn around and sell the car and make a profit on it. The car becomes an investment that you will have years to come.

The cons of owning the car are that cars do break down. Some people take out an extended warranty on vehicles that they own because of that very reason. Whether your vehicle is foreign or domestic does play a role when your vehicle breaks down. Foreign cars tend to be more expensive to fix and are harder to fix. Not a lot of mechanics are qualified to work on all foreign cars. Even if your vehicle is domestic it is still expensive to fix depending on what goes wrong. If it is just a water pump or an oil pump that can be fixed without causing you a lot of stress. However, if the transmission goes out, or the engine goes out that can be very expensive to fix. Not a lot of people can afford to pay that cost and end up abandoning the vehicle.
Whether you own the car or lease the car both have their advantages and disadvantages. You have to decide which one is right for you.