Lease or buy.
The same car, the same money, drawn two ways. The lever nobody moves is how long you keep it.
A lease looks cheaper every month because it is cheaper every month. You are paying for the part of the car you use up and handing the rest back. That is not a trick and it is not a mistake — for some people it is exactly the right answer.
What the monthly figure cannot tell you is what happens in year six. A lease has no year six: it starts again. A car you bought and kept has a year six in which you pay nothing at all, and that is where the whole difference lives.
So move the last slider first.
Money paid out, less whatever the car is still worth when you stop. Leasing never owns anything, so its line is simply what left the account.
Read it as a table instead
- Insurance, fuel, tyres, servicing and tax are left out of both. They are close enough to identical for the same car either way, and putting them in both sides would move the two lines up together without changing which one is lower. Where they genuinely differ — a lease demanding higher cover, a warranty running out in year four — that is real, and it is not in this picture.
- Buying is financed with ten percent down over five years, then you own it.
- Leasing assumes you always have a car, so the lease is signed again every three years, with the same drive-off cost each time. That is the honest comparison: a person who leases does not stop driving in year four.
- The car loses about fifteen percent of its value a year. A convenient curve, not a recorded one — real cars vary enormously by model and mileage, and this is the number most worth arguing with. It is why the second slider you should move is the price.
- Mileage limits and end-of-lease charges are not modelled. They only ever run one way, and it is not in the lease's favour.
Mechanisms, not recommendations. Nothing here is advice about your money, no product is named, and no rate quoted anywhere in this page is a rate you can get today.