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I think that's where it falls down for us.
The guy I was chatting to son just got a alfa giulia for ~£360pm. Obviously for that level of car it's great. And if I was looking for something smart I'd go that route. Not picking on Dammit here, but I think his Porsche has been a great eg of when to lease.
But we're looking at a different end of the scale for something likely to be destroyed by a baby / children.
I'm still going to crunch some numbers tho.
hugo7-
Not picking on Dammit here, but I think his Porsche has been a great eg of when to lease.
Yes and no I'd say - I bought the 996 in 2016, and it's cost me £1,842/month if I break that down.
But wait! I have an asset that has value as part of that, and it was recently valued at £20,000, so if we believe for one second that that is true the figure falls to £1,008/month.
If I were now to go to the fairly standard minor/major service pattern for the next few years that monthly cost would tail off significantly - it's perfectly possible that my total expenditure in the next twelve months (excluding fuel/VED/insurance) would be circa £300.
It won't be, because of the new engine, but lets leave that out of things for now.
Anyway - over the period that I've had the car I think it's basically equal between what I've spent and what it would have cost to lease a 991. But I don't (and did not) want a 991.
The C55 would be a better comparison, which I bought for ~£12,000 IIRC and have then spent ~£4,000 on. Right now it's very expensive on a £/month basis as it's fairly new, but I'd expect it to go onto routine maintenance for 2019 as I've fixed most things now.
All that to one side, there have been long periods when I've been without one of my cars, and that's what I suspect you can't afford, especially with small children - for you, a lease I think would likely make more sense. You want something that's 100% reliable and doesn't need to be thought about.
Dammit
Both my wife's and my car are leased. How good 'value' they are depends a bit on what metric you use to measure 'value'. I was pretty flexible with the actual cars we got in exchange for getting good deals (general consensus being that total lease cost over a 2 yr lease being anything less than 23-25% of the RRP for the vehicle is a good deal).
For both cars I am paying less than the depreciation over the 2 year period which feels like good value to me but that is of course using the cost of a brand new car as the bench mark.
An interesting point of reference given your budget - total lease cost (6+23 months) of my wife's Volvo V90 is £7,830 on a car with a sticker price of just under £38k. I had to settle for not picking my own spec as a Volvo dealer up north had the vehicle on site and was offering it at this price as I suspect he was under pressure to move it.
Having said all that, the lease market is pretty crap for buyers (leasers) right now though, very few deals about.