When do you need a car lease calculator? When deciding whether to buy or lease depends on your situation, and our free calculator will allow you to compare the two options so you can see how each will affect your finances or budget (click here to jump down to the calculator).
How to Use Our Car Lease Calculator
Compare the lease vs. Loan options by filling in the appropriate fields:
Purchase Price: This includes the price that the dealership will be using to calculate your monthly lease amount, or the price that the lending institution will be using to compute your monthly loan payments.
Sales Tax Rate: For a lease, this would include any tax that is in addition to the amount included in each monthly payment. For a loan, enter any tax amounts that you are not paying up front, but will be including in the financing.
Fees: This includes any fees that you will pay to purchase the vehicle or leasing fees that you will be adding to the lease’s Net Capitalized Cost.
Cash down payment: Enter the amount that you will be putting down toward the purchase or lease of the vehicle.
Net Trade-in allowance: This is the amount of the trade-in value that you w ill be applying toward the purchase or lease. Remember, if you still owe a balance on your trade-in vehicle, this must be paid off first.
Rebates: This includes any incentives, allowances, or “cash-back” that you will be using to reduce the loan amount or the lease’s capitalized cost.
Term: Enter the loan or lease term length (in number of months). To get an accurate comparison, make sure that the loan amortization is equal to the lease duration.
Interest rate: Enter the interest rate that your bank will be charging on the loan, as well as the financial rate or “money factor” being applied to the lease contract.
Monthly Payment: If you know what your monthly payments will be, you can enter them in this field. If you do not know, leave the field blank and the calculator will compute this for you.
Security deposit: Enter the security deposit required by the leasing company.
Estimated resale value: If your lease stipulates the residual value at the end of the lease term, enter this amount. Otherwise, the calculator will estimate this value for you using the annual depreciation percentages on line #13 (which will be based on the term length you have entered). Determining resale value of a non-lease vehicle may require some research, but you can get a good idea by looking at current black book values or checking used car listings. You can also leave this field blank and let the calculator estimate this figure for you.
This calculator was very useful for me. Right now I am in the middle of trying to get out of my current vehicle because it’s become quite impractical because of some life changes.I have a sporty convertible but I got it before I bought a house on a rough dirt road and before I moved to the Midwest where the winters are bad. I also have a dog who has outgrown the back seat so I need to get into another vehicle soon.
I’ve really been liking the idea of leasing a vehicle because I do seem to change my mind about cars and like getting a different one every couple of years. However, I do not want to be losing out on a lot of money.
I used this calculator to see if it would be better to lease or purchase the vehicle I’m pretty sure I would like to get. This calculator has helped me come to the conclusion that just trading in my current car and purchasing another one will be the best thing to do financially for me.
I see myself wanting the car for a longer period of time and the vehicle I like has a great resale value. I am also going to get a very low interest rate if I buy it.
Thanks for creating this awesome lease calculator, it’s really helped me decide which option is going to be best for me! This calculator will be an excellent tool for most people who are in the market for a new vehicle and I will surely be passing this tool/webpage onto many of my friends and family members looking to either buy or lease a new car.
For additional explanations, please click on a field and instructions will appear in the “Instruct/Explain” box.
NOTE: Using this free car lease calculator requires your browser to be javascript enabled. This is usually preset for you so you should have no problems. However, if you have set javascript to be off, please change your browser settings (under Options or Preferences) to allow javascript so you can use this car lease calculator.
Learn More About:
Using Debt Income Ratios In Debt Management.
The Financial Community’s Recommended Budgeting Guidelines.
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