[ORL335i]

What I really prefer is a one payment lease - stroke a check for the lease up front and either buy the car in 3 years or give it back. Kind of like paying cash - one big advantage to this strategy is when it's time to turn it in and I decide to keep it, I turn it in and buy it back as a certified used car so I extend the warranty to 100k miles. The last time I did this was on an 01 X5.

If I don't want it I just give it back - Porsche has true one payment leases, on a BMW I put as much down as they'll let me which on the 335xi will be about $18k then pay the other $3k or so up front to BMW financial- basically paying the lease off.

If I decide to keep it I pay cash for the car - and I negotiate the price, I've paid less than the residual on the lease this way. The dealer can be overloaded with used stock and they don't really want the car, so I get a deal on it.

I've never done a cost analysis on this strategy - I don't like car payments, I feel I'm going to lose the $$ in depreciation regardless so I just pay it up front and I'm able to have a what feels like a paid off car for three years with no payments. If I decide to keep it I pay a balloon payment in 3 years - simple.

On the X5 it worked out to almost exactly as if I'd paid cash for it up front dollar wise - I basically made two payments on it - approx. two $25k installments three years apart.