Leasing vs buying new vs buying used: the car decision, settled

A car is the most expensive thing most people buy repeatedly, and the acquisition method — lease, buy new, or buy used — changes the decade-long bill by tens of thousands of dollars. Each camp has loud partisans. The honest answer requires running all three over the same ten years, counting everything: payments, depreciation, interest, maintenance, and what happens at the end. So that's what this is. All figures are estimates for a typical $35,000-class vehicle in 2026; your numbers will vary.

The 10-year showdown

Same driver, same decade, three strategies: leasing a new car every 3 years (with a fourth lease running through year 10), buying a new $35,000 car and keeping it 10 years, and buying a 3-year-old version of the same car for $23,000 and keeping it 10 years.

The case for leasing (it's real, but narrow)

Leasing is renting the car's steepest depreciation years — you pay for the value the car loses plus finance charges and fees, then hand it back. That's structurally the most expensive way to run a car, but it buys real things: always under warranty, always new safety tech, lowest monthly payment for the newest car, and zero resale hassle. It genuinely fits three groups: business owners who can deduct lease costs, drivers who would buy a new car every three years anyway (leasing just formalizes it), and people who want a fixed, predictable transportation subscription and accept the premium. Watch the tripwires: mileage caps (often 10,000–12,000/year, with per-mile penalties after), wear-and-tear charges, and early-exit costs.

The case for buying new

New cars lose roughly 40–50% of their value in the first five years — the worst investment years of the car's life, and buying new means eating all of them. What you get in exchange: the full warranty from mile zero, exact configuration, the latest safety equipment, typically the best financing rates, and a known history. The math only works with one behavior: keeping the car a long time. A new car kept 10–15 years amortizes that brutal early depreciation into respectability. A new car traded at year 4 is nearly as expensive as leasing with extra steps.

The case for buying used (the default winner)

Buying at year 3 means someone else paid the steep part of the depreciation curve. Modern cars routinely run past 200,000 miles, so a 3-year-old, 36,000-mile car has most of its useful life left at roughly two-thirds of the price. Higher maintenance costs than the alternatives are real but dwarfed by the depreciation savings — the table's ~$12,000 of maintenance sits next to ~$20,000+ of avoided depreciation and finance costs. The risks are concentrated at purchase: a bad specific car. A pre-purchase inspection by an independent mechanic ($150–$250) and a vehicle history report defuse most of it.

The verdicts

The bottom line

Settled, then: buying a lightly used car and keeping it a decade wins on math, buying new and keeping it forever is a defensible luxury, and perpetual leasing is a convenience subscription that costs roughly a car per decade over the alternative. Leasing wins only in the specific niches — business deductions and committed three-year traders. Whichever door you choose, the decade-defining variables are the same: how long you keep the car, and what you do with the months that have no payment in them.