Look at the math when you consider X vs X-200.
I know the immediate cash flow might be an issue, but let’s pretend you could manage the difference.
Assuming a 3 year lease, you’d spend 7200 extra buying versus leasing.
And you have a car worth Z dollars.
If Z > 7200, buying is a better deal.
Actually, if you need to make a down payment when you lease the next car, that reduces the differental - if your down payment is, say, 2400 dollars, then Z just needs to be > 4800 (7200 - 2400).
I can’t say for a fact that these statements are untrue, because I haven’t seen the lease agreement or the offer in question, but neither have you.
The odds are that the dealer has already signed up the OP on a mediocre deal on the existing lease, and will happily waive the last few months of payment in order to sign him up to another lease that is mediocre (read: more profitable for them).
bingo
I’m definitely going to check out the leasehackr website
Since you are with GM you might consider springing for a Costco membership if you don’t already have one. For the last few years the Costco Auto program has run a holiday promo with GM where you can get up to $750 back. This usually stacks with other promos and you might be eligible for a pull-ahead incentive by Nov/Dec. You have to be a Costco member before Oct. 1, though. More info here:
True - I haven’t seen the OP’s lease paperwork - and I’ve never leased a car. I’m going by my anecdotal experience of the in-laws leasing a car while their previous one was still under lease, and my assumption that the dealership will screw the OP any way it can. (btw, the in-laws went with a different dealship, I think, that may make a difference).
Definitely pay VERY close attention to the paperwork. My in-laws - who we always thought of as intelligent - insisted that the cost to keep that first leased car (i.e. to purchase at the end of the lease) was an amount that was higher than the current retail price of a brand-new car of the same model. E.g. they’d paid 14,400 over 4 years of the lease (+ a 3,000 down payment), and supposedly they could opt to keep the car after 4 years if they bought it for 22,000. They could have bought a new one for 21,000.
They never showed us the paperwork - but I have to imagine that the 22,000 was something like the total they’d have paid including the payments - i.e. the residual was 8K or so - but I don’t know for sure.
We had a thread about that and the consensus was your in-laws were dumb. There couldn’t possibly be a lease where the buyback cost was higher than the price of a new car.
Yup (and your sig is perfect for the topic, LOL). They never showed anyone the paperwork so we never had a chance to cry BULLSHIT (or worse: YOU WERE SCAMMED). I wouldn’t entirely put it past the dealer to have rooked them that badly - it’s an area with a LOT of elderly people who are ripe for the picking :(.
Selective memory, too - they claimed that was the first car they ever leased, when I know for a fact they had one in the late 80s / early 90s.