Car ownership has for many years been considered to be a status symbol and the better and newer the car the higher was the associated status. It seems that in many quarters the general view on this is undergoing a process of change. Car leasing is a viable alternative to ownership and is one that can provide many advantages.

First let’s look at how it works. First you need to decide how much you can reasonably afford to spend on your car. Car leasing deals can vary from a couple of hundred pounds a month to well over a thousand pounds a month, so there is plenty of choice. You also need to think about how long you want the lease to last (two or three years is typical, though you can opt for shorter or longer periods if you wish). You also need to have a reasonable idea about the amount of mileage you intend to do annually. Once you have decided this you need to look at a few car leasing dealerships to see the types of card you can afford.

If you have not done this before you are likely to be very surprised about how much you can get for your money compared to how much it would cost you to purchase the same vehicle using a car loan. In some cases the repayments on a car loan are twice as much as the monthly payments on car leasing deals, and in many cases they are 33% higher. You might be able to get a much better car that you had thought, such as with the BMW leasing deals from Frontier.

To get the best deal going it plays to be flexible. Car leasing dealerships often offer quite amazing bargains, so it pays to be proactive in this respect. The reason why contract hire is relatively cheap when compared with car purchase is that the dealer is recouping from you only the amount that the car devalues during the course of the lease. When the lease has expired and you have returned the car, (and in all likelihood you will have collected another brand new car), the dealer will liquidate the capital tied up in the returned car’s residual value by selling it on.