Quote:
Originally Posted by bdoooh
What's the MSD program now?
I guess I didn't think about the car being totaled part.. I have loan/lease payoff on my insurance but, then that initial down would be gone.. I didn't think about that.
That's a hard decision though because if I put that much down in the end.. I would have paid less due to not having to pay interest on all that.. but then again, I up the risk factor.
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MSD program is literally "Multiple Security Deposit". It's basically where instead of a single security deposit at lease inception, you put down multiple. Each MSD will be the amount of the payment rounded up to the nearest $50... so if your lease payment is $455 a month you'd pay your MSD's at $500 a month. Up to 7 of them.
Check this link;
http://www.fairbmwlease.com/guide.html#cMSD
The problem is, you're not going to get close to $250 a month using MSD's. Even with perfect credit you're probably going to end up at twice that. Yes, you could do the down-payment but as I said that's a bit of a losing game since you're investing in something that isn't yours. Remember, this is a rental car... at least for the purposes of discussion. You're just renting it for a LONG time. As a result, there's no need to put a lot of money into it particularly if you're not going to get it back.
The MSD's on the flip side actually provide a decent ROI since they reduce your MF. While you'll get the same cash value back at the end of the lease (whether totaled or just complete the contract), the money you'll save amount to a pretty decent return. I think as I recall 7 MSD's ($3500 in the above example) will give you up to about a 10% annual return in monthly payment savings. That's better than I've made in the stock market the last couple of years
Leasing is all a black art to some... but it helps if you just think of it like a rental car contract. Hopefully this all helps
Oh, and if you want to figure out your options, build and how it will affect payments, the best lease calculator and configurator I've found is here;
http://bmwconfig.com/BmwConfig/Config.aspx. Using that, I figure that if you go with a BASE 135i with zero options and can spring for a euro delivery pickup, then you're looking at about a $4000 out of pocket and a bit over $400 a month on payments. Pretty sweet deal for an awesome car IMO