Being frugally minded and debt averse I’ve always been proud to say that I pay cash for my cars. One of the cars in our household was bought new and the other one was bought used. After calculating the costs of buying a previous car for an upcoming post on the Lending Club blog, I’ve come to realize that paying cash may be costing me more for a number of reasons.
The main reason why paying cash for a new car costs more is the fact that new cars depreciate so quickly. As a result, leasing may be less expensive than paying cash and certainly less expensive than buying with borrowed money. To perform a reasonable comparison, I looked at the latest deal being offered at my local Honda dealer. Here’s what I found:
The vehicle in question was a 2008 Honda Pilot. The purchase price is advertised at $33,630. The same vehicle can be leased for $5,931 down then $279 a month for 36 months. If you bought the car, it would cost you $33,630 and be worth between $11,000-$15,000 after three years. That estimate comes from the blue book value of a 3 year old Pilot in good condition with 36,000 miles, the mileage allowance of the lease in question. Taking the high value of what the car would be worth, after three years, the car would have cost $33,630 - $15,000 = $18,630. The lease on the other hand would have cost $5,931 + $279*36 = $15,975. As you can see, buying the car would have cost at least $2,655 more just on money spent versus value after 3 years.
Next comes the opportunity cost of paying cash. Buying uses up $33,630 right now. If you instead invested that money (minus the $5,931 down payment on the lease and withdrawing the $279 payment each month) you’d still have over $20,000 after three years even if you were only getting a measly 4% APY. So after 3 years, instead of having a car worth at most $15,000, you’d have a bank account worth at least $20,000. Higher APYs make an even stronger case for the lease option.
Obviously owning a car for a longer period of time slowly makes paying cash a better deal. Since the lease basically cost you $5,325 per year ($15,973/3) your direct costs would be less if you owned your car for 6.3 years. The opportunity cost of not being able to invest that money would extend the break even point even longer. While there’s certainly something good to be said about a frugal person who keeps their car for a long enough time to make paying cash worth it, the reliability of such older cars as well as the maintainable costs will also start to become a factor.
What this exercise shows more than anything else, new cars tend to be an expensive means of transport regardless of how you pay for them. We would all be better served financially to go with a used car. For those who do opt for a new car, it would seem that a lease has many advantages over purchasing, even in cases where cash is paid.
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July 1st, 2008 at 8:01 am
[…] TV Show wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe purchase price is advertised at $33630. The same vehicle can be leased for $5931 down then $279 a month for 36 months. If you bought the car, it would cost you $33630 and be worth between $11000-$15000 after three years. … […]