Break out incentives on calculator

Haha, sure I could. But this thread is called a “suggestion.” Do you like to shoot down ideas?

Not every suggestion needs green lighted.

This is what I’ve done, as mentioned above. The other huge plus to doing a spreadsheet on your own is that it teaches you the fundamentals of calculating a lease. If your spreadsheet numbers don’t match the LH calculator, then you still need to learn how leases work a bit better. :slight_smile:

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I’m not asking for it to be green-lighted, simply stating my support based on the logic of the idea.

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Fair enough…I provided a counterpoint.

Because it doesn’t really fill a need.

Right now, there are basically two buckets of people… Those that understand that there are two categories of incentives, Taxed and untaxed, and they put them into those two buckets and the people who can’t even be bothered to recognize that incentives don’t go in the sales price. Adding more line items doesn’t help either group, but it certainly will make it harder to get the later group to use things properly.

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Every great idea needs to weigh additional functionality vs additional complexity

The LHC is aimed at a non-expert… so would the average first/second time user be better off with two named fields vs an unlimited number of unnamed fields?

Someone doesn’t get sarcasm

hard to read via text sometimes, especially when your “5” was a relevant response, with nothing indicating sarcasm.

It fills a need for the people who don’t care to become experts. It makes it much more clear what is in the deal being shared or proposed, and what can be added or subtracted based on eligibility.

If I were designing it, I’d only have one line as a default for incentives (so you’d actually streamline the current calculator), with a toggle for each to be taxed or not. and an add button to add additional incentives.

I disagree. It provides more inputs, thereby providing more areas for error.

More doesn’t always equal better. Sometimes the KISS rule applies.

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There aren’t more inputs if you don’t want there to be more inputs.

TBH, I’d throw the calc away altogether. That forces people to learn how to calc a lease by hand, thereby providing them more understanding of how a lease works. IMO, the calc is more trouble than it’s worth.

9 x out of 10, the posts are “I can’t get the calc to match…” and it’s almost always user error. Give them the math formula, let them calc it out by hand, or via excel spreadsheet if they have a basic knowledge of Excel.

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Fair, good idea

Initial brainstorm - if people cant get the calculator to match, send them to the spreadsheet. If people want their hand held, offer folks to pay a ($10?) fee to a trusted hackr to trace through a deal. I bet this would clean up the forum.

That’d be a good set up for someone that knows what they’re doing, I agree, but for the vast majority of the people that use it, it would just cause more issues unfortunately

In a best case scenario, you’d select your state and it would auto-fill whether your selected rebate or incentive was taxed or not :blush:

I assume this was tongue and cheek, but hard disagree. It’s a great tool for starters and has tons of utility for regular users, brokers, etc. However, as I said before, there is always room for improvement. There are plenty of good suggestions on how the calculator could be improved, streamlined, and simplified (its not a zero sum game).

Apple spent years turning first and second gen cellphones into a user-friendly, streamlined, and simplified device that anyone can use. Do experts and true hackers like iPhones and Macs the most? No, there are far better alternatives for high-productivity users and specialists.

Perhaps this might be an indication that it’s not user-friendly enough? Carrying over the same principle from the Apple example, the best lease calculator for experts is clearly a complex spreadsheet similar to desking software. I have one, most expert users here have one too, from what I can tell. We aren’t the ones who rely on the LH calc to succeed. The newbies do.

I wish there would be more enthusiasm to help improve the calc here. We ran into this same issue with the monthly deal hack thread in June. Lots of people are clueless. Why not help them by striving to make the best calculator possible, and not poo-poo any new ideas.

Given the great work @RustyDaemon, @edmcman, and some of the others on the tech crew have done with the scraper, I’m certain that there are enough bright and willing minds to do some testing on new calc features or designs. Perhaps in a the same vein, the mods could create a calc group dedicated to building and testing new iterations…just a thought.

And before anyone steps in to critique me or push back on making “unnecessary” calculator improvements, we’re probably just going to fundamentally disagree and can leave it at that. If you’d like to present an argument about back end costs or about lack of willing and able labor to make the changes, then fine. I came here with a passion for cars and leasehacking and I make suggestions/ comments with a keen interest in growth and improvement. I love the site for what it is, and will love it as it grows and evolves into something greater.
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So, does anyone know who’s in charge of the calc?

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The one and only @littleviolette

Here is my suggestion: for a fee ($5?) you send someone your lease worksheet, and they send you back a calculator link that is filled out correctly.

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And of course I didn’t know LH didnt have any sort of Dev team. In which case, I totally support any and all small monetization options to help improve the site/ increase funding beyond donations.

Just to be precise, I’m not saying LH should charge (though they could), maybe the brokers or other members of the site want to do it.

I hope the responses to this thread don’t discourage people from making suggestions (keep them coming), but they are usually from the perspective of one person trying to save time leasing their 1 car a year. Breaking out the incentives (for instance) solves the problem of where to put those, but which are/aren’t taxable varies, and so you would still need to know that to calculate the lease correctly. You still end up with a user education problem, even though we have

and (courtesy of @mllcb42):

Because the best means different things to different people.

Just a quick example of contradictory needs:

A. To probably 90+% of people the best calculator would more closely resemble a lease quote or contract, and the selling price field in the calculator would mirror the “agreed-upon value” of the contract, ie it would have direct-to-dealer incentives embedded within it.

B. However, LH regulars need those incentives to be stripped out, to reveal a truer level of dealer discount, and to better normalize the data coming thru the forum.

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