Jul 12, 2009

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.