Single-Payment Lease

A prepaid lease is a new type of lease which has made its foray into the

market in recent times. In this lease, consumers forego the cycle of lease

payments if they make a large payment at the beginning of the lease.

There are two amounts in a conventional lease that incur charges and

determine your monthly lease payments. First, there is a depreciation

charge which accounts for the value the car loses during the lease term.

Second is a residual amount which is the projected value of the vehicle at

the end of the lease. The sum of these two charges gives the monthly

payments on your lease.The idea behind a pre-paid lease is to eliminate the

finance charges for depreciation and only account for residual value

charges in a single, pre-paid payment at the beginning of the lease.

Single-payment leases are devised with spendthrifts in mind: no cycle of

monthly payments, a new car every two to three years and no interest in

purchasing the vehicle at the end of the lease. You should only consider

this type of lease if you are concerned about not being able to make monthly

payments and have a lot of cash upfront.

Lease Financing

For auto-consumers, crunching the numbers is one of the most difficult and

confusing aspects of leasing.

Take the finance charge on a lease for instance. Most people just don’t

understand how this is calculated on capitalised cost AND residual value

instead of just the capitalised cost. For most, it seems plainly obvious,

just as is the case when purchasing, that a charge should be levied on the

capitalised cost of the vehicle.

Well, no quite! When you lease a car, you’re only using the car over a

specified period of time with the option of buying the car. The residual

value represents the “loan balance” at the end of the lease. If you add it

to the capitalized cost and divide by two, you’ll get the average

capitalized cost outstanding over the lease term. Let us suppose you’re

leasing a car with a capitalized cost of $25,000 and a residual value of

$15,000. You average balance over the lease term, irrespective of how long

it is, is $20,000 – the sum of the two divided by two -.

Using this sum works because the money factor is the annual interest rate

devided by 24, rather than 12. Continuing with our example and assuming an

interest rate of 6% APR:

$30,000 X (6 per cent / 24) = $75

(Capitalized cost + residual value) X (interest rate / 24) = Monthly

finance charge

This finance charge is added to the depreciation charge to calculate the

monthly payments on your lease.

How to calculate your lease payment

Understanding how to calculate your monthly lease payment makes it easier

for you to make an informed decision. Yet, most of us shy away from the

“complicated” math on our lease contract, leaving it up to the dealer to

do the payment formula.

Actually, it’s not that difficult! Once you understand all the figures

involved in calculating your monthly payments, everything else falls into

place. These key figures are:

MSRP (short for Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price): This is the list

price of the vehicle or the window sticker price.

Money Factor: This determines the interest rate on your lease. Insist on

your dealer to disclose this rate before entering into a lease.

Lease Term: The number of months the dealer rents the vehicle.

Residual Value: The value of the vehicle at the end of the lease. Again,

you can get this figure from the dealer.

Now, let us calculate a sample lease payment based on a vehicle with an

MSRP (sticker price) value of $25,000 and a money factor of 0.0034 (this is

usually quoted as 3.4%). The scheduled-lease is over 3 years and the

estimated residual percentage is 55%.

The first step is to calculate the residual value of the car. You multiply

the MSRP by the residual percentage:

$20,000 X .55 = $11,000.

The car will be worth $13,750 at the end of the lease, so you'll be using:

$20,000 – $11,000 = $9,000

This amount of $9,000 will be used over a 36 month lease period giving us a

monthly payment of:

$9,000 / 36 = $250.

This is the first part of the monthly payment, called the monthly

depreciation charge.

The second part of the monthly payment, called the money factor payment,

factors the interest charge. It is calculated by adding the MSRP figure to

the residual value and multiplying this by the money factor:

($20,000 + $11,000) * 0.0034 = $105.4

Finally, we get the approximate monthly payment by adding the two figures

together:

$250 + $105.4 = $355.4

To recapitulate, the sample formula looks like this:

1- Monthly Depreciation Charge:

MSRP X Depreciation Percentage = Residual Value

MSRP – Residual Value = Depreciation over lease term

Depreciation over lease term / lease term (number of months in the lease) =

monthly depreciation charge

2- Monthly factor money charge

(MSRP + Residual value) X Money factor = money factor payment

3- Sample Monthly Payment:

depreciation charge + money factor payment = monthly payment

Keep in mind that this is a simplified calculation that does not take into

account taxes, fees, rebates or any other incentives. The calculation gives

you a ballpark figure or a rough idea of what your lease payments for the

vehicle in question should be.