I always hear financial gurus like Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey refer to leasing as "fleecing."
They say leasing a car is like throwing money down the drain.
We are tagged as an idiot if lease a new car.
But this never made sense to me.
Fortunately, I hooked up with Leo Vaserbakh - a Toyota salesman in Canada.
He claims that leasing ALWAYS is cheaper than buying a car.
(I found Leo posting in the comment section of a financial advice website.)
So I contacted Leo...
And over the last month, we traded many emails (and expensive phone calls) discussing this.
Leo's information blew me away about leasing.
I could not debunk any of his reasonings on why leasing was cheaper than buying a new car.
As a result, I came up with this spreadsheet - comparing 3 consecutive leases to driving a Toyota RAV4 into the ground over 9 years:
The math confirms leasing costs less than driving the same new car into the ground.
Here is the most surprising "Wow, I did not know that" revelation.
It is a secret most car dealerships do not want us to know about.
The secret is we should (almost) never turn in a leased car...
Instead, we should sell it back to the dealership (and roll into another new lease for life).
This eliminates any damage fees and over-mileage penalties.
And when we pick the right car with a residual percentage over 55%, we can even make a tiny profit, too. And the good news is all 2016 RAV4s (in all trim levels) exceed a 55% residual percentage.
Anyone up for debunking our findings?
Update on 2/5/2016 @ 10:37 a.m. EST - I created this 6,000+ word post on leasing for life that organizes all of my replies on this post.
They say leasing a car is like throwing money down the drain.
We are tagged as an idiot if lease a new car.
But this never made sense to me.
Fortunately, I hooked up with Leo Vaserbakh - a Toyota salesman in Canada.
He claims that leasing ALWAYS is cheaper than buying a car.
(I found Leo posting in the comment section of a financial advice website.)
So I contacted Leo...
And over the last month, we traded many emails (and expensive phone calls) discussing this.
Leo's information blew me away about leasing.
I could not debunk any of his reasonings on why leasing was cheaper than buying a new car.
As a result, I came up with this spreadsheet - comparing 3 consecutive leases to driving a Toyota RAV4 into the ground over 9 years:

The math confirms leasing costs less than driving the same new car into the ground.
Here is the most surprising "Wow, I did not know that" revelation.
It is a secret most car dealerships do not want us to know about.
The secret is we should (almost) never turn in a leased car...
Instead, we should sell it back to the dealership (and roll into another new lease for life).
This eliminates any damage fees and over-mileage penalties.
And when we pick the right car with a residual percentage over 55%, we can even make a tiny profit, too. And the good news is all 2016 RAV4s (in all trim levels) exceed a 55% residual percentage.
Anyone up for debunking our findings?
Update on 2/5/2016 @ 10:37 a.m. EST - I created this 6,000+ word post on leasing for life that organizes all of my replies on this post.