Helping me get my girlfriend out of her Mercedes Benz GLE350 lease

What’s her current payoff (not incl sales tax) and what is Vroom et al offering? No lease transfers with MBFS ASFAIK so third party buyout is likely the best bet here. Of course, unless there’s significant pos equity, not sure it would make sense to do that either.

I am concerned about her financial position because I have been with her for a couple years and we are probably going to be starting a family soon together. I am 47 and she is 36. I am financially secure and she is not. Just because I am financially secure and CAN take care of her, doesnt mean that I want to because she is not making good financial decisions. I am going to be handling basically all financial decisions in our relationship, because that is what I am good at. She will probably be a more “traditional” house wife, because that is what she loves doing and I am terrible at it. It works out well for both of us.

Her monthly payment is ok. $400 a month. She has about $10k worth of “equity” in the vehicle, mainly because of the hot market. I want to get out of this albatross as sooon as possible and while the market is hot. I also want to get her into something a little bit more reasonable long term. In 7 months, that equity is gone, because their is no way she is going to be able to finance that vehicle with no job, and she is not going to be able to come up with $40k to pay cash, so she will be back at square one again.

I am not subsidizing her payment. She is extremely hard working but due to the pandemic lost her job. I am sure she will be getting a new one asap, but that is probably going to be paying cash for the most part, which isnt going to help with financing.

What is this based one? Did you get quotes for selling the vehicle from Carvana/vroom/Carmax/shift?

Sorry, what does “what was the money factor” mean?

She put down $21k and traded in a 2017 Cadillac xt5 suv, which they also hammered on her for.

As I said, she is not very good with money :joy: :sleepy:

28 months into the lease and she has paid $32K thus far. If she gets $10k back in equity, her net cost on the lease is roughly $780/month. Not bad on a GLE 350.

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No they do not allow transfers (ask my meme), yes they currently allow 3rd party buyout

The only 2 year lease whose RV makes sense is a LR Defender, and they don’t lease well.

Why not keep driving it another six months, and if inventory is better try again? If you sell used cars, you know how bad things are now to get-in.

Neither of you should be entering a replacement lease if you haven’t read Leasing 101

The best place to start is

Please read links in there such as “how to calculate payments” and other helpful articles.

It might seem like a lot but TBH there are fewer <60 minute exercises which will save you so much time, money and anxiety over your driving lifetime.

It may also save you (after your negotiations with LH input) inside the finance office where no one can from the internet can really help you.

Remember, it’s almost impossible to reverse-engineer the math starting from the output (monthly payment) and figure out if it’s a good deal. Start at the beginning.

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I’m guessing the thought is by waiting out the market you’d lose more in lost positive equity than you overpaid getting a née car now vs 6-mo assuming you stepped down to something more reasonable.

That said, I’m not entirely sure that’s the case here.

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.00281, which suggests there’s probably some lower tier credit going on here too.

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If the 3PP and ACV are here, I missed them. But I suspect we’re stepping over dollars to pickup dimes from 2019…

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You don’t expect her to have a job by then? Then why do you think she will be able to finance now or ever since you are not going to help her with it? But you plan to start a family together?

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Definitely not present here. I can only speculate that’s the thought process, but to your point since neither data point was shared, there’s some healthy skepticism that it’s going to work out quite that way, also to your point.

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Message from Mercedes dealership

After looking at the current market conditions and taking reconditioning and certification costs into account I would be a buyer at $51,000 for her GLE.

How much did carvana and carmax offer for the vehicle?

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Are you an individual buyer at $51k or a wholesale buyer at $51k? Because there is a difference. If you try to private party this car, you are subject to sales tax and eat away at your $10k equity. Go grab some offers online, it takes all of 5 min.

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That is EXACTLY what I am trying to do. Things are changing so rapidly in the market that I think prices are going to drop soon and a lot of cars are going to be coming onto the market. The chip shortage is going to end. I am considering just buying a beater to get around for a while. I have a couple other cars for my businesses and I am trying to get her to consider driving one of those, but going from a 2020 mercedes benz to a 2013 Kia sorrento LX doesnt seem to be going to well.

I have a few options out there to get her a car, I just NEVER considered a lease because I always buy 1 or 2 year old cars and then ride them for a long time, but that is not exactly a great option right now. Leasing again is just a last resort that I might consider if that might fit my needs this ONE time.

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That $51k is from the Mercedes dealership. Basically she walks away with a $8-$9k check. I got a little bit better offer from vroom, but that doesnt seem too reliable from my 2 hours of research.

If it sounds like I am sorta uninformed on this stuff. It is because I am. She basically gave me the go ahead to get rid of her vehicle about 7 hours ago, and I am trying to get rid of it for the right price as fast as possible before she changes her mind.

Understand all that, but first separate the sunk-cost fallacy: there isn’t 10K in equity, there is less than half of the upfronts she paid on the GLE that happens to be there for the possible talking.

If you can convince her to drive something with significantly less cache than a GLE, and that you don’t have to overpay for. This is your biggest problem.

Of course the shortages will end, but not tomorrow, and at this pace unlikely this year.

And if you do lease again (fine if you don’t), you are going to get cleaned-out worse than she did 2 years ago.

Literally thousands of posts with first-hand accounts if you search and start reading. But TL;DR I’d start with an Auto Nation store for that specific unit, today.

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I would figure out exactly what a replacement will cost today before abruptly unloading the car. It’s not hard to make a bad situation worse in this market.

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Correct. She is a US citizen, but just came over from Thailand 7 years ago, and basically has no credit, at least none until we started building it about a year ago. She now has a 780 credit score, but recently lost her job, so is in a bit of a catch 22.