@Joel_Pimentel , I’m glad you’re keeping an open mind and are here to learn. One of the first responses you received was from an “OG” Leasehackr who for some reason hates ICE leases and wants people like you to hate leases too. For some reason he wants you to feel bad about getting into lease, and admonish people who want to get into a new ICE lease today.
If you keep an open mind to leases, they can be great for people who place value in having the freshest cars under manufacturer warranty. It’s not that leasing CX-50’s in succession is expensive per se, it’s that constantly being in a brand new car is expensive since you’re incurring a significant amount of depreciation by being in new cars.
Let’s look at the logic of the people who want you to buy a CX-50 today to own for 6 years. In 3 years, the vehicle will be a used car. General warranty is expired (powertrain to 5 years 60k miles). Creaky. Starting to be outdated tech. But to reduce that vaunted “total cost of ownership”, you’ll need to keep operating this used car to save money.
If you’re fine driving a 3 year old car for 3 years, then there’s nothing stopping you to save money today, You could just buy a low mileage 3 year old Mazda CUV right now. There’s a reason you may want to be in a new car that isn’t a EV. If you want to be in a new ICE vehicle, then try to get the best lease deal on the car you actually want.
Leasing provides the benefit of having built in GAP insurance and the optionality to purchase a vehicle at the end of the lease term. The acquisition fee in a lease is basically the cost to enter into this GAP insurance and have optionality. In addition, monthly payments under a lease will be less than the principal + interest payments of a normal car loan.
My recommendation if you want to “build equity” during your lease term is to find the monthly difference between a lease payment and corresponding loan payment if you didn’t do a lease. Whatever that difference is each month, save it in a brokerage account or savings account.
At the end of the lease term, if you like your CX-50 and want to save some money, buy out the lease and keep the car. A person who buys a car today can always sell their car, but the residual is not guaranteed. A closed-end lease provides the lessee with the upside that there’s always a set value at the end of the lease term. So if depreciation works in your favor, you keep the positive equity. But if real-experienced depreciation is worse than expected, you can return the vehicle and move in without a second thought. A person who buys a vehicle gets exposed entirely to the residual.
The Money factor for your Mazda lease is basically 2.0% APR. So the cost of funds to enter into the lease is a bit worse than if you could get 0% APR financing on a loan. That’s worth considering, but ultimately a decision you’ll want to make after weighing the pros and cons.
TLDR, the only person who can make the right judgement on operating a slightly used car for a few years to save money is you. If you want a new CX-50 now, you can always lease it today and buy out the vehicle in 3 years to save money buy continuing to drive a used Mazda CX-50 in 2027.
