Question: If I’m able to (not sure how I’d find out), is it worth getting out of my 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee lease for a more spacious/luxury suv in 2020 or do I suffer another year?
Background:
Prior to starting a family, I leased a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo in March 2018 through Chrysler Capital closed end agreement. 36 month lease/10k miles per year/payment of $365 per month. Car currently has 13k miles on it. Residual value of car is $21,000.
However, with the little one who is almost two months old, I’ve begun to hate the entire seat layout of the car. We have a Nuna Pipa car seat and with the stabilizer, neither my husband or I can manage to have the driver seat or passenger seat in a comfortable position without the carseat touching. In addition, no rear facing carseat mirror can be seen from the rear view mirror which is frustrating. The Grand Cherokee just doesn’t have the space/layout conducive for parents of infants.
Get a 3rd party buy out quote from Vroom, Carvana, Shift. My guess is you’ll probably have some negative equity. At this point, without knowing any further details, my guess is you’re probably better off just getting through the next year and then start fresh with something with more rear seat room.
Personally, we have Tiguan S and it’s been great, we have a Uppababy Mesa car seat and the US Tiguan is the long wheel base version which adds all the extra room to the rear seat, perfect for car seats.
EDIT: Congrats on the new addition to your family!
As I’m sure others will also suggest, one of your first steps would be getting a value for your car from vroom, carvana, carmax, etc. If this exceeds your buyout price (not residual, but lease buy out, which is basically your residual plus your outstanding payments), great! You can sell the car, buy out the lease, and net some cash. If the selling price is less than the buy out, you need to decide if it’s worth it to eat that loss to get a more comfortable car.
One more suggestion, while you only have seat anchors on the 2 outboard seats, you can use the seat belt on the center seat to mount the car seat base. You may want to try that and see if it alleviates your problem.
Current offer from Carvana was $23,665.
Am I understanding correctly that if that covers the residual value of the car in a future state that I’d be good? Or, should I be evaluating the Carvana price based on what the car would be at end of lease?
These posts always crack me up, they’re not in rear facing car seats forever! Just suck it up for a little while unless you want to flush thousands of dollars down the toilet, if it’s that bad just sit in the backseat with the kid.
Even when it becomes forward facing the legroom in the backseat is deplorable with the front seats at a comfortable position when the parents are 6’ or taller. Didn’t think I’d become a mom before the lease was up…
No, you would need to know the current payoff amount of your lease. Then put that against what the offer is. If the offer is more than or equal to the payoff amount, you’re golden. If not, the difference is how much negative equity you have.
Congrats on the baby! You’ll find valuable help here, along with some negative Nellies😂 Hope you find what you need. I traded my 4Runner because of space and love my VW Atlas. It’s huge and easy to get multiple kids in and out of. And it has amazing cargo space. Good luck!
And I can understand what you’re saying. When our son was born we had a 2013 Honda CR-V, which we figured would be more than adequate. Add in that big bulky seat on a daily basis, and we quickly realized we needed more room. The wife upgraded to a Nissan Pathfinder and she’s been in love since. On her second Pathfinder now. Funny thing…she actually looked into getting a Grand Cherokee, and the back seat space was a big reason she went against it. The Pathfinder is much roomier.
Hmm, so about $1500 in negative equity (or about ~$125/mo for each of the remaining 12 months you have left). Is it worth taking the loss to dump the Grand Cherokee? That’s something only you could answer. However maybe go test drive a few cars and decide if this is the right move for you.
If you do do some test drives, Tiguan & Atlas are some good options that lease pretty well. The Passport did lease well, not sure if it still does. Acura MDX, Volvo XC90 or Infiniti QX60 if you want a luxury brand. Not sure about the rear seat room in XC90 though.
QX60 may be worth a look, they seem to lease well. To let you know, we have a Pathfinder SL 4x4 that we got at $399 for 36/15 with about $1,000 total out of pocket. It’s not the most thrilling car in the world, but they’ve been super reliable for us and the wife loves the space.
If you’re only $1500 underwater that isn’t that bad, but a couple things I’d consider first since my wife and I just went through this when we upgraded her RDX -> X5.
There are a number of smaller car seats on the market. Our 2 year old son is in the 95%+ percentile for height so we have one of the Graco seats with leg extender which certainly is on the big side, but if a smaller car seat or putting the car seat in the center is an option those are worth considering - especially if you’ve only got a year left to manage.
Have you tried putting the car seat in the center? It’s a little harder to get them in and out? Is the car seat behind the driver or passenger?
I’m 6’4 so I sympathize, but my wife refused to let us get a minivan and I’m the one who suffers.
In our case - car seat behind the passenger (who can deal with being less comfortable) has been best for mirror viewing + driver comfort. When all 3 of us need to be in the car, I get to drive so I have more room.
You may have just missed the window to snag a great deal depending on the manufacturer since December is about to close. But if you really felt like you had no other alternatives then it might just be worth rolling the $40/mo forward into the next lease if you’re able to get a substantial deal on a car now.
Whether you agree or not, car seats have grown increasingly larger in side to meet stricter crash standards. A number of states also now mandate seats be rear facing until 2 or older.
When we were kids, lap belts, and forward facing plastic tubs were totally fine and compact cars weren’t a thing so you could raise a family in a VW beetle.
Most people also opt for convertible car seats which grow with the child but as a result are saddled with being even larger.
If my wife and the law let me spin my son around I’d be throwing him in the back of a 911 and lighting up a cigarette
still, op is driving a GRAND Cherokee, which to me looks like a decent size suv. We had a huge carseat/stroller system in our Civic only 10 years ago and it was fine.
Came to suggest this. A smaller car seat will cost a lot less than getting a different car.
At one point we had 2 in rear-facing and one in front-facing. With the right seats, we were able to get all 3 across in a Mountaineer (Explorer) and still be comfortable, but it took some trial and error to get there. We eventually went up a size and bought a Sequoia, but that had more to do with reliability issues than fitting car seats.
