Car Leasing Troubles

J.,

I told my husband about this...he works for Honda Cars of McKinney. He said give him a call and he should be able to help you...he said he has seen people who were more "upside down" than that. Good luck...we were upside down on our Dodge Caravan for years...we had a 355 payment and just ended up riding out the "Smart" (Stupid) Buy...good luck.

Mark at Honda Cars of McKinney ###-###-####)...let him know I referred you and he can give you a discount.

J.,
I'm looking to get out of my "fleece" too. I have a 2006 Honda Odyssey. You probably have a "purchase price" for your SUV. At this point ours is right around $26K. Go to KBB.com (Kelly Blue Book) & find out what your SUV is worth in private sale. My van is worth only about $1500 less in private sale than I would owe if I paid it off in full. So, I'm going to detail it out & try to sell it for around $24K. Then I will give my purchaser a "Bill of Sale" from uslegalforms.com, send that money to Honda, along with the difference out of my pocket (stupid tax), get the title & give that to my buyer. Then, I'm going to turn around & buy an older model Odyssey or Mazda MVP for $8-10K (Yes, I'll have to finance it initially, but we will just sock it to the monthly payments & get it paid off in about a year). After that, we'll be DEBT FREE, except for the house!!

After really examining our lives & motivations, "necessities" & wants, we realized a brand new van was more show than it was "need," & as I have 2 kids & a painting business, I'd rather destroy a $8K van, than a $26K one!!!

Priorities, priorities, priorities... I came upon Dave Ramsey's wisdom about 9 months too late!! He calls what we do in these instances "Stupid Tax." So, true!!

So, anybody want a 2006 Gold Honda Odyssey w/ leather, moon roof, automatic doors & little ding to the front bumper (thank you who ever dinged me in a parking lot last year!!) :)))

D.

Well, I'm not expert, however I listen to Dave Ramsey on talk radio. He get's questions like this all of the time about lease (or what he calls 'fleece') deals. I can't remember his advice, but he gives detailed steps on how to either get out of leases or at least reduce the pain. His website gives the stations he is on. If you listen for just a couple of times, i'm sure you will hear him talk about this subject. There are tons of dave ramsey devotees on this site. Maybe someone can remember his advice on this subject.

http://www.daveramsey.com/

Leases are just bad deals, and I'm afraid you'll have to lose some money. When we leased, we just waited out to the end of the lease and turned it back in to the lease agency, then purchased an inexpensive lease return from them. We had leased a Honda and stayed within the mileage requirements, so we didn't lose out as bad as we could have, but we'll never lease again. You may be able to do the same if you end the lease early. Again, however, you're likely to lose money on the deal.
We just had to chalk it up to an expensive lesson to learn.