Guides

The arithmetic is one division. Every error is in the inputs — the dashboard readout, the supply-only rate, the averaged MPG, and the road-trip charger. Here is how each one moves the answer.

Federal law makes the dealer print the eleven numbers a lease payment is built from. Here is what each line means, which three decide the payment, and where the negotiating room actually is.

Payback is the price premium divided by the annual saving. Most published paybacks are too short because they count only fuel, and many still quietly subtract a federal credit that ended in 2025.

Falling short of the window sticker is normal, and the agency that prints the sticker says so. Here is what the combined figure actually is, the four things that thin it, and what the gap costs you in a year.

Most new-car buyers owe more than the car is worth on the day they sign, and the gap gets wider before it closes. Two situations make that a problem. Everything else is a number, not an emergency.

The rule compares the price of selling a car with the price of keeping it. Those answer different questions. What decides it is the repair bill divided by the miles it buys, against what the same miles cost in a replacement.

The average new-car loan now runs nearly seventy months, and a third are longer than six years. Stretching the term is the one lever that lowers the payment without lowering the price — here is what it costs in interest, and the larger thing it costs that nobody prints.

The Census measures your commute in minutes. Your bank account measures it in miles. Gasoline is about a sixth of the bill — and there are two defensible ways to price the rest, answering two different questions.

Most of what a car costs accrues on the calendar, not the odometer — so the same car in two driveways costs 124¢ a mile and 45¢ a mile. The per-mile figure is a fact about how much you drive, and fuel is rarely the line that decides it.