Car lessee needs to be driven to make a decision
The deadline I’ve been dreading for almost three years is rapidly approaching — the lease on my car expires at the end of October. Which means
I’m going to have to decide what to do about that.
Making decisions is one of my biggest weaknesses. Or maybe not. Either way, I need to make one.
As nearly as I can tell, I have four choices.
1. Buy out the lease and keep my current car. It has low mileage and all sorts of technical bells and whistles that are easy to operate for anyone who has even a little experience in piloting a space shuttle. Just last month, for instance, I learned how to switch the radio from AM to FM. And I’m making great progress now toward learning how to switch it back to AM.
2 . Turn in my current car and lease another one just like it. The new car would have no mileage and all sorts of updated technical bells and whistles; figuring them out would give me something to do for the next three years.
3. Sell my current car and buy some other brand. I’ve been tempted to buy a flashy convertible this time. But then I checked prices and discovered that the flashy convertible I had in mind started at $101,000. Discovering your car payment would be approximately the same
as your mortgage payment is a great way to overcome temptation.
I’ve tried educating myself by exploring several online car-dealing authorities. Which, I learned, is like slicing open a wrist and jumping into a sea of starving sharks. Ten seconds after I had filled in the data they required, that information went viral and my inbox was overrun by emails from every car dealer this side of the Mississippi.
Whatever I do, my stepson is urging me to negotiate because it’s a seller’s market. When he recently traded in his last car, he related, the dealer gave him $6,000 more than the residual. But I’m even worse at negotiating than I am at decision-making. By the time I got done with the dealer, I’d probably wind up paying it $6,000 to take the car off my hands.
Some people, especially guy people, apparently look forward to shopping for new cars and talking about technical stuff such as what’s under the hood. But I must be a few quarts low on testosterone. I don’t know what’s under my car’s hood because I still haven’t found the control that opens it, although I’m sure it’s there somewhere.
So perhaps I should just go to option No. 4, which would be letting my wife tell me what I’ve decided.
Or maybe not.