I leased a 2021 Subaru Forester Touring in January 2021 when I moved to the east coast, I regret the lease but not the car if that makes sense. I should've listened to my dad and just bought a used car but that's in the past and I can't change it.
Anyway, the lease is up in January and I can't decide whether to buy out the car or turn it in and buy something used. The situation now is I'm married with an 11 month old and an 18 year old step daughter. My wife and I will likely have more kids but it's hard to plan because of a medical issue that may make that more difficult. If our family grew even by one more baby right now the Forester would be virtually unusable for us, we'd need some kind of vehicle with third row. But that's kind of a big variable to factor into the calculus.
So I'm weighing the possibility of turning in the car and just going out and buying a used minivan so we can be sure of the space. The problem is, if I turn in the car I'm surely going to incur some significant penalties because it's about 15K miles over the agreed mileage limit limit; there's some wear (our dog nearly chewed completely through the rear-middle seat belt) and I've lagged on maintenance (brakes and tires). I have a bit of money now that I would use to catch up on that maintenance and as a small down payment of sorts to finance the vehicle. I can get an 84 month loan from a local credit union for $25K at 7.9% interest which would bring the payments down to roughly $358/month, about 50 less than my current lease payments.
I make decent money (about $5,800/month take home) but much of it is spoken for with debt payments to my wife's and my various credit cards, student loans, and a debt consolidation loan. We're managing well so far, chipping away steadily at things but it would be nice to lower our car payment a little bit. Especially since we're a one-car family of three drivers and it'd be a big relief if we could afford to buy a cheap used car as a second vehicle (was looking at an 07 Corolla for $6K, as an example).
My question is, would it be more prudent to turn in the Subaru, just deal with the mileage and maintenance fines and go out and buy a used minivan to better fit my family or would it actually be more responsible to avoid the fines and keep the newer car?
Submitted November 30, 2023 at 06:50PM by kinkyzippo https://ift.tt/SzJlNWD
