Got the car on Labor Day.
**2018, BMW, i3BEV, and Black with Park Distance Control and turbo cord charger.
**MSRP: $47,245.00
**Selling Price: $42,043
**Monthly Payment: $137.53 ( tax included )
**Cash Due at Signing: $5,500
**MSD:NONE
**Incentives:$10,000.00
**Months:30
**Annual Mileage: 12K/Year
**MF:0.00166
**Residual:$28,347
**Region: So. Cal.
**Leasehackr Score:29.3 years
location and dealer?. Did you pay $5500 cash or was part of that some rebates?
BMW Riverside
$5,500 was cash for down payment, which parts of it goes toward tax, license, registration, docs, 1st payment and etc. The exact figure that goes to cap reduction is $3,663.36. which brings the total cap reduction to $13,663.36.
I’m not really making any down payment after all the qualified rebates.
so zero out of pocket?
I did pay $5,500.00 towards down payment. I’m saying that there are several rebates that you could be qualified for. I’m just advancing these rebates towards down payment. After I received these rebates, it’s just like zero down. A lot of people have done what I did. And I have 2 friends took my advice and leased 2 i3 the same weekend.
So your effective lease payment is actually [$5500/29 months = $189] + $137 = around $326 monthly
Take that and minus whatever rebates you qualify for.
Either way, you shouldn’t have put all that money out of pocket.
If you car is ever totaled or you utilize any kind of conquest/pull ahead program, you’ve thrown away money.
No. Your calculation is incorrect. In 60 days or less, I will receive $3,816.00 from various rebates. I’m not throwing money away. I’m leveraging these rebates as buy down.
On the other end, you’ll come out ahead if you extend your lease. BMW provides courtesy extensions for two months and will extend up to 6 months if you order a new vehicle. My family had three leases end this year and we extended all for a few months, so in hindsight, we would have received an even better deal if we put more down, but of course, the gamble in doing that is that you’ll lose your entire down payment if your car gets totaled.
I’m the event my car is totaled, not only the insurance will conver the car. I will still receive the rebates.
If you don’t understand how this works, you should read up others i3 lease deals. I’m just sharing my lease deal with the forum and hope it helps others.
There is no need to defend your deal. Let us criticize your numbers so others can benefit and make their own conclusion.
I am just sharing info so people know how it can work to their advantage.
There is no need to criticize this deal. it is actually very good. He is out of pocket for a net effective of $199 a month. That’s smoking in my opinion.
If you don’t understand something, in this case leverage, there is not a whole bunch for you to be criticizing.
Appreciate it. I think it’s a good deal too. Like I said, 2 friends got almost exact same deal. I also heard that BMW just cancelled Costco membership. One should verify.
It is a good deal for sure. Damn close to the total net effective I paid on my Volt! I floated the entire amount on my lease via a one pay. Only getting $1500 though in total rebates. I looked at this BMW, but the 2 gallon gas tank and tiny engine scared me away. Now that I have had my volt for a month. I have yet to use a single drop of gas. 
Think I will jump completely over to the dark side on the next lease. 
Zero emissions is the good side.
An alternative would have been to pay drive offs only and still received the rebates. I agree on the cash down comment. In the car were ever totaled the insurance co will not repay the cash. I also agree with the option for lease extension. For my current lease I did a 12 month month pull ahead. In my case I am glad I did not put any cash down.
You will receive your rebates no matter what; whether you put down $0 or $5,500.
Your rebates are completely irrelevant to how much you should put out of pocket.
All you did was prepay the lease, that is not leverage.
What you are doing is the opposite of utilizing leverage; leveraging your money would be borrowing more (in the case of a lease, financing the entire depreciation plus normal driveoffs.
Maximizing leverage in a lease means $0 out-of-pocket.
By the way, I wasn’t criticizing your deal at all.
I think it’s a good deal.
I was simply giving advice on how one could have improved your deal without any more work, by simply putting as little down as possible.
In general, it is not financially advantageous to extend a lease.
In a lease, you are financing depreciation.
If your payment matched the actual depreciation curve, your monthly payment would be huge at the beginning and be much smaller at the end.
Your lease payment doesn’t do that, it’s the same every month.
What that means is that you are underpaying for depreciation at the beginning of your lease and overpaying for depreciation at the end of you lease so it balances out.
Extending your lease only means you are spending more time in the over payment zone.
I said “in general” above because of course, there are exceptions.
Maybe the current lease programs/incentives are really crappy, you are waiting for your ordered car, or you’re going out of town and don’t need a car for a couple of months so it’s better not to be in another lease at that time.
“Float” is probably a better description of what he did.
I am curious, does BMW do one pays?