Request, add a CASH Due line and have it work in place of Cash Down.
Not sure if it can be done properly but where it says ‘Down’ and where it says ‘Total Due’ is probably the most confusing part of the calculator to me even now when I calculate a deal and I am putting down $3000 cash
It makes it slightly easier to understand, I put $3000 Cash, when it’s really $2500 cash down and $500 toward TTL.
See how this deal needs to say $2567 Down, but it’s really $3000 cash due?
While we’re picking bones, it’s time to get rid of the LH score.
It’s frankly meaningless and only serves to confuse.
Those of us on the other side of the desk will often tell you unprompted if a car is a better finance than a lease whenever the lease is legitimately worse than an equivalent retail deal.
You can’t really replace cash down with cash due, they’re 2 different things.
Down payments are applied against the principle of the loan, but it’s totally possible for certain things to be paid upfront specifically without making a down payment.
That said, for simplicity’s sake, and because most “normal” people just want to see a certain amount out of pocket, most dealer desking tools will simply let them force a number due at signing, which rolls everything to the cap cost and then puts a down payment against it.
I don’t think it’s confusing. It’s a useful way to normalize the cost of a lease and see at a glance which models are “leasing well”.
People who rely on the person on the other side of the desk to tell them what a good deal is are the ones who end up here after the fact asking how they got screwed so badly.
An input field or slider at the end that can move the payment up or down continuously depending on the DAS.
Right now all the inceptions in the calc are binary choices (pay each one updront in full or capitalize). In reality anything can be partially upfront or partially capped.
It’s basically how most dealer CRM’s work if you don’t get specific, they just do everything as 100% capped zero due leases and then you just enter how much you want upfront.
I’m still a n00b here but I like the Leasehackr score for relative comparisons, i.e. comparing multiple deals for the same model of car but different MSRPs (different upgrade packages/options), discounts, down payments, etc.
I agree that it’s not as useful for absolute comparisons across different brands, but it can still give a very rough idea of “value” in terms of which car has better lease deals.
