Utah Buick dealers could help you make a wise decision between your leasing and buying choices, which is not always easy to do. One section of your choosing will be about your personal preferences, feelings, priorities, and values. How important for you is driving a new vehicle every two or three years? Just how important is it to keep your repair risks low? How crucial is maintaining a low payment? How badly do you desire a payment-free, debt-free auto as soon as possible? Decisions on these kinds of personal priorities help you get through all the non-financial issues, but understanding all the financial differences between buying and leasing is also critical.

In a six-year comprehensive comparison of a purchase of a new $20,000 vehicle to the three-year consecutive leases of two new $20,000 vehicles, there’s a large difference in the money spent for tax, insurance, maintenance, down payment, monthly payments, and DMV costs. The purchased auto (using a five-year loan) cost $34,228 over the six years and had a retained value of a few thousand dollars or so at the end. The leased vehicle cost $39,176 and had zero retained value. That makes a $4948 higher cost to have the leased autos for six years, with no adjustment for the retained value of the purchased vehicle. The purchased car in this scenario is payment-free for one out of the six years. Essentially, leasing provides a lower-payment vehicle with no equity but a higher overall cost, and buying gives higher monthly payments and partial equity, but for a lower overall cost.

For this six-year comparison, then, buying a vehicle winds up being cheaper, but has bigger monthly payments that can extend over the complete six years. This purchaser would drive the same vehicle for six years as opposed to leasing a new one every three, but also would have the option to keep using the old car until it died, for possibly a good long time. Conversely, the second leased car is returned to the dealer the instant the lease is up, rendering the driver vehicle-less.

Leasing offers the advantage of low or nonexistent down payments and lower sales taxes amounts, but it generally has higher insurance costs than purchasing does. Leased autos, however, usually have built-in gap coverage, while purchased autos almost never do. This means that when a financed vehicle is stolen or totaled, the debtor could end up paying off the bank balance (even for thousands of dollars) after the insurance company has settled.

Leasing a vehicle is somewhat more complicated than it is to buy one, and leasing provides more opportunities to misunderstand and misinterpret the whole process and make mistakes. It’s wise, therefore, to get plenty of information and to be careful in the process. And one more final thing about leasing-when your lease contract is over, if you’ve exceeded your allotted miles, you will be penalized! To get more helpful buying and leasing information, just visit your GMC, Pontiac, or Buick dealers in Utah.

Want to find out more about GMC dealers in Utah. Stop in at Gregory Motor’s website to get more information about GMC dealers in Utah and help with deciding between leasing and buying.