Perhaps this deserves its own (or belongs in a different) thread but with all the discussion re cars figured I could post here.
Im not looking to buy or lease a car so haven't really looked into it but just from observations I wonder.
It seems buying a car is about 100x the cost of leasing a car per month. Meaning a car you car you can get for $30k is $300/month.
So to reach the total cost of buying, you would have a leased car for 100 months or 8 years, 4 months.
Now obviously an almost 9 year old car would be worth something but the tradeoff is that you've had one car in that period instead of 3, so besides the "new car" factor servicing/fixing etc probably cost much more.
Or in a different scenario, after 6 years you want to sell your used car. Let's say you get $10k for it, if you would have leased that car would have cost you $21,600 and you would've had 2, again probably saving on servicing/upkeep.
So why do people buy cars?
Is my math way off?
Are there other variables that I've totally ignored/don't know about?
Or, is it getting the 25% off a new car which you just can't do on a lease?