to buy or to lease?

So as most of my regulars know, I own a POS car, a 98 Mercury Tracer that breaks down on a regular basis, has no heat or A/C or defroster (yeah, I’m aware that’s illegal but there isn’t much I can do about it for now), the washer line is busted or something, I have a cracked headlight so water collects inside the light fixture (yes another hazard, I KNOW!). I’m contemplating a new car. I checked my credit the other day. It’s pretty good, sitting right around 700 (I won’t post actual number). This is mostly due to my own OCD need to pay my bills regularly out of fear of ‘failing’ in any way. Inadvertently I’ve been taking care of my credit score just be being obsessive over paying my bills regularly lol.

Now I’m debating the merits of buying or leasing a car.

Why the debate?

Simple. I don’t necessarily need a permanent car deal right now. I’m at the point in my life where I’m ‘looking’ to get married and start settling down but I haven’t. I also could move in the next 2-3 years between going to school or the whole ‘settling down’ thing. I also don’t necessarily want to sell my car 2-4 years down the road if it turns out that I need to change my vehicle style due to my lifestyle.

So I’ve started looking into leasing. Things I’ve had to start considering:

1. How much driving do I do?

I drive around town a lot, I average roughly 200 miles around town on a single tank of gas on my current car, roughly 2 weeks worth of driving. If the average lease allows 10k miles a year, and I drive roughly 500 miles in a month, that adds up. That’s 6000 miles in a year easily. Add into that the fact that I do like to drive out of town every few months (to the faire in the summer/fall, that’s an additional 200 miles or so) and to University (though to be honest I probably won’t be making many more trips there now that they’ve started pissing me off) or to the beach or other places. I might not hit the 10k/year but I could if I wasn’t careful.

2. Maintenance?

Am I willing to pay out of pocket for maintenance of a car if I buy it? Honestly, I hate the idea. I am notorious for having technology hate me (Ipod, laptop, cable, internet, phone, current car, etc). I try to take care of what is mine but I honestly don’t have the money to pay out of pocket if something goes wrong.

3. Selling and trading?

Am I willing to undertake selling or trading a car down the road? Probably not the smartest idea. I wouldn’t know where to start. I’m also more likely to get the wool pulled over me trying to sell or trade the damned thing because I’m completely clueless and way too trusting of people. Also, I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of it. I don’t even want to deal with it NOW!

4. How much am I willing to pay?

I don’t have a lot of money. Leasing (on average and I’ve done some research already) seems to trend as a lower monthly payment versus taking out an auto loan (which would be on top of the 5 other loans that I have in my name from school). Do I really want to take another loan out? How will that look when I have to start looking at loans to go back to school in a year or 2?

5. How long do I plan to keep the car?

Honestly, going back to the statement waaaay up there at the beginning, I’m in a transition state of my life. The idea of having a car for years and years and years isn’t necessarily something for me. In 3 years I could have kids! Some little economical 2-door is probably not going to be all that great of a car if I am lugging around an infant car-seat. But what’s the point of having a ‘family car’ when it’s really just me and I have to watch gas mileage and all that.

On top of that is insurance cost all all that but I haven’t really looked at all that yet. Still trying to decide which is a better option. Isaac was talking about us going to one of the dealerships he’s worked with where he knows people so that we can actually sit down and discuss those kinds of things with someone. His brother works at the Chevy dealership and I get a discount with the pharmacy at GMC dealerships so he also wanted to make sure we asked if that was something that could be factored into a lease or other financing option.

I don’t know, just sort of testing the waters for now. It’s a big pond.

Help?