LH Calculator and how to use it

Thank u so much :+1:

First Post! Having some calculator questions / issues. I’m calculating the lease for a $38 car. Changing ONLY the MF added $42 more to my payment, just by upping APR from 1% to 2.66%? This seems like a huge increase for such a small change. Is this right?

Sale Price: $38k
MF .00043 vs .00111
Monthly Payment: $340 vs $382

Yes. That’s how rent charge works, if you changed nothing else that should be the correct change. You’re nearly tripling the MF, shouldn’t it go up by all means and logic?

BTW RV/MF is found for normal people at the edmunds forum…

Search forum.edmunds.com + lease deals and prices + model of car you’re looking for.

Don’t guess numbers with what you want to pay.

Thanks! Sorry, very new to all of this. Rent charge is another way to put MF / APR?

Ah ok thanks for confirming! In my head 1% vs 2.6% APR sounded like such a tiny change, didn’t expect a 15% or so increase in monthly payment! I’ve been on the Edmund forums, got the RV/MV/Incentives etc. Just thought I was using the calculator wrong. Thanks again

The following is an over simplification meant to highlight the general concept and isn’t 100% accurate

The problem is that many people look at this and say “well, my payment is $100 before the rent charge, and it’s only 1%, so how could it make much difference? After all, 1% of $100 is only $1.”

What they miss is that in a lease, you’re essentially taking out a loan for the entire price of the vehicle. The rent charge is basically the average interest paid as the vehicle depreciates from the selling price to the residual value.

In this case, your selling price is $38000. If we assume your RV is about $20,000, then the rent charge is the APR being applied to the average between the two.

So instead, it’s the difference between 1% and 2.66% of $29,0000.

That means, each year, the rent charge would increase from $290 to $771. Divide by 12, and you’re going from $24/month in rent charge to $75/month in rent charge.

The preceding as been an over simplification to highlight the concept

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Right of course! I’d never sign a deal with out all this sorted. This is day 1 of research :slight_smile: The logic makes sense. For simple folk like me you see a lease and figure you’re only paying interest on what you borrow, not the total. But even so, at the total cost I wouldn’t think a 1.5% increase in APR would have such a big affect. Shame on me, I recently refi’d my mortgage for this very reason should have known!

You basically are borrowing the whole amount. You’ve just pre-arranged the repurchase at the end of the set term. Think of it more like “I’m buying and financing this vehicle for $38k and the bank agrees to purchase it back from me for $20k after 3 years.”

Yeah that makes sense. Thanks all super helpful

Is there any way to get Texas taxes into the monthly payment? I can only seem to get it to show it as upfront payment. Easy to calculate manually, just curious.

Click the third tax option for tax on full amount, adjust the das as needed per the calculator FAQ.

Click on the cap tax option.

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Different states tax some of the fees differently, but more importantly, separating out the fees rather than lumping them all together allows you to comparison shop properly as identify which fees may contain hidden dealer mark ups vs which fees can’t change.

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Not that this matters, but just FYI.

The calculator score doesn’t seem to value tax credits. If I keep it at msrp and reduce taxes the score is lower than a small discount with full taxes, even though the total payment is less on the first scenario.

Hello, is there a way to bypass this?

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Reduce residual by .25/.3 per mile if the car is eligible to be leased, formula is mileage - 500 multiplied by per mile cost (.25 or .3 for high end models).

:chocolate_bar:

When using the calculator what should I put in as selling price? and is the tax rate based on the dealer’s location or where it’s going to be registered?

The selling price, before incentives. On the contract itself, it’ll be listed as “agreed on value” generally (although if there are direct to dealer incentives included, you’ll want to back them out from this number).

Tax rate is based on registration location.

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I’m trying to construct a deal to aim for, but I don’t know how much off MSRP to calculate