Introduction: The Best Car Lease Calculator and Auto Lease Payment Calculators
For many people, leasing a car can be the best option to access a vehicle for work, study, or any other use.
While everyone would like to own their car outright, sometimes the financial burden that comes with taking out a long-term car loan isn’t the best financial decision. If you do decide to lease instead of purchase a new or used car, you will want to learn how to calculate a lease payment.
There are a number of leasing a car calculators that can help you to calculate a car lease payment.
Instead of blindly trusting the agency where you decide to lease the car, a used car lease calculator is a simple tool that will help you make sure that you’re getting the best deal. A simple auto lease calculator will also make sure that you understand the terms and conditions on your lease.
In this brief article on the best auto lease calculators, we will first explain what leasing a car entails. We will then look at how to calculate car lease payments. We’ll then explain how a leasing a car calculator works.
We will also examine what qualities the best vehicle lease calculator should have before reviewing the top car lease repayment calculators and how these can teach you how to calculate a car lease.
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What Does It Mean to Lease a Car?
According to Wikipedia, “vehicle leasing is the leasing (or the use of) a motor vehicle for a fixed period of time at an agreed amount of money for the lease.”
Many times, businesses choose to lease cars for their employees instead of purchasing automobiles. The use of an auto lease payment calculator can allow business owners to calculate the cost of leasing as part of their everyday business expenses.
If you don’t have enough money to purchase a new car or good enough credit to get a decent auto loan for a quality used car, leasing may be the cheapest way for you to get access to a quality car in better condition. A car lease calculator is an indispensable tool to help you calculate your car lease payment.
While leasing may very well be the best option for people who need a better car than what they can afford to purchase, there are a few common mistakes made when people lease without first consulting a car lease payment calculator.
One of the most common mistakes that people make when leasing a car is putting down a high upfront payment. Many dealerships that lease cars may ask for a high initial payment to offer you low monthly payments.
When you learn how to calculate a lease, you find that you pay in interest over the course of the lease. However, if the car is wrecked or stolen at the beginning of the lease, you most likely won’t get any of that initial down payment back and will be left without a car despite making a large initial investment.
Furthermore, the mileage agreement on your lease will also affect your monthly payment. When you use a car lease payment calculator to find how to calculate a lease payment, you should take into account the fine print in your agreement regarding the mileage limits.
Bankrate.com advises that “it’s common for leasing contracts to have a driving maximum of 10,000 miles to 15,000 miles per year…If consumers exceed those limits, they could be charged an additional 10 cents to 30 cents per mile at the end of the lease.”
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How to Calculate Car Lease Payments
Image Source: Calculating Car Lease Payments
A quality vehicle lease calculator is by far the easiest way to find how to calculate car lease payments. However, it is entirely possible to calculate your car lease payment with spreadsheets or by hand. While an auto lease calculator may very well be easier and more efficient, there are two other ways to find out how to calculate a car lease.
One of the easiest ways to find the best car lease without using an auto lease calculator or a used car lease calculator is through searching the internet for various quotes.
There a number of companies out there financing car leases, and you can easily find the best rates out there through doing a simple internet search. U.S News offers a quality tool to help you search for the best lease rates online. You can find that car lease tool here.
If you don’t trust the internet and want to learn on your own how to calculate a car lease without the help of an auto lease payment calculator, you can calculate your car lease payment on your own.
First, you’ll need to find out the sticker price of the car, the interest rate, the lease term, and the residual value of the car. While an auto lease calculator may calculate these for you based on the current rates, you can easily find this information by looking over a dealership’s website.
An example of the rather complicated formula to calculate a car lease payment without a leasing a car calculator is given by the car experts at Edmunds.com. The formula and example are given below.
| 1. Sticker Price of the car + options | $23,000 |
| 2. Times the residual value percentage | X 0.57% |
| 3. Equals the residual value | = $13,110 |
| 4. Invoice price of car minus incentives (net capitalized cost) | $20,000 |
| 5. Minus the residual (from line 3) | – $13,110 |
| 6. Equals the depreciation over 36 months | = $6,890 |
| 7. Depreciation (line 6) divided by term in months | ÷ 36 |
| 8. Equals the monthly depreciation payment | = $191 |
| 9. Net capitalized cost (From line 4) | $20,000 |
| 10. Plus the residual (From line 3) | + $13,110 |
| 11. Equals | = $33,110 |
| 12. Times the money factor | X 0.00125 (3 percent) |
| 13. Equals money factor (interest) payment portion | = $41 |
| 14. Monthly depreciation payment (from line 8) | $191 |
| 15. Plus money factor payment portion (from line 12) | + $41 |
| 16. Equals bottom-line monthly lease payment | = $232 |
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What Is an Auto Lease Calculator and What to Look For in the Best Vehicle Lease Calculator?
If the above equation seems like a lot of complex multiplication and division that you’d rather avoid, an auto lease calculator can help you find out how to calculate a lease payment without having to search through your dusty high school math textbooks.
A car lease calculator is simply a tool provided for free online by a number of independent websites and companies that specialize in car financing.
In order to use a car lease repayment calculator, you’ll need to have some basic information, including the price of the car, the final negotiated price, down payment, sales tax percentage, length of lease, new car lending rate, and the value of the car at the end of the loan.
A car lease calculator will do the complicated calculations for you to help you find how much your monthly payment will be and how much interest you will end up paying over the course of the loan, but it won’t be able to give you the specific numbers.
You can easily request those numbers from the dealership in order to do your own calculations. Alternatively, an auto lease calculator can be used to help you discover how much you can afford so that you can know how to negotiate with the dealership.
If you are planning on leasing a used vehicle, a used car lease calculator can also be found online. We will review a used car lease calculator below.
When searching for the best car lease calculators, it is important to make sure that they also ask for the sales tax.
Many of the simpler auto lease calculators leave this important detail out, giving you an inaccurate calculation. Furthermore, a car lease calculator that offers information on current lease interest rates is helpful so that you can compare the national average to what the specific dealership is offering.
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Top Car Lease Repayment Calculators to Help You Find How to Calculate a Car Lease
If you feel that you are ready to start searching for the best auto lease calculator to help you learn how to calculate car lease payments, you can start your research with these four quality car lease payment calculators.
Bankrate.com Car Lease Calculator
The car lease calculator offered by Bankrate.com is an easy-to-use tool that can help you quickly and efficiently find the basics of how to calculate a car lease.
This car lease repayment calculator asks for all the pertinent information and, according to the website, will “estimate the capitalized cost, lease price, residual value, the depreciation and lease fees, the monthly payment without taxes and the monthly payment after the tax is applied.”
Image Source: Car Lease Calculators
This quality auto lease calculator also offers up-to-date information on the current car lease interest rate averages for an auto loan so that you can compare the benefits and disadvantages between purchasing and leasing a new or used car.
Edmunds.com Car Lease Calculator
The folks at Edmunds are car experts. Their vehicle lease calculator is also one of the most complete car lease calculators on the web. With this auto lease calculator, you can easily determine how much you can afford based on the current rates for leasing a car. With the help of this auto lease calculator, you can narrow down your search for the best car to lease by knowing how much you can afford.
Furthermore, the car lease calculator by Edmunds.com also asks for your zip code so that they can offer you details on your car lease based on your location.
Nationwide Car Lease Calculator
Nationwide is best known as an insurance company. However, their website also offers a helpful car lease calculator that compares the benefits and disadvantages between leasing and purchasing. Their simple-to-use car lease calculator will quickly calculate your estimated monthly payment for leasing or buying so that you can determine which is the right option for you.
Furthermore, this auto lease calculator also gives you helpful graphs so that you can quickly compare whether buying or leasing is the best financial option for you.
Cars.com Car Lease Calculator
The vehicle lease calculator offered by cars.com is perhaps the easiest car lease calculator to help you compare the benefits between buying and leasing.
You can choose the make, model, and year of the car and whether you want to lease or buy, making this car lease calculator great for people interested in used cars.
Furthermore, this auto lease calculator offers information on current interest rates so that you can compare multiple offers.
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How an Auto Lease Payment Calculator Can Help You Find the Best Lease Arrangement
With the help of an auto lease calculator, there isn’t much of a learning curve on how to calculate a car lease.
As long as you can find some basic information regarding the car’s price, the depreciation rate, the term of the lease and the interest rate, you should be able to quickly calculate your car lease payment with any of the above auto lease calculators we reviewed.
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