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Rosie's in New York.

Hey, Rosie, what's up?

Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

How can I help?

My employer is offering a pre-tax benefit for leasing a vehicle.

So would this affect the financial, you know, advice comparison between leasing, financing, and buying a vehicle outright?

No. Leasing a vehicle is financing a vehicle. You're signing the lease, right? Yes. No, don't do that. No, no, no, no. I'll take the money. Just give me the money, and I'll go buy a car. Even though the lease would be pre-tax and if I buy the car, it will be post-tax. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. The deal is this. Leasing is the most

expensive way to operate a vehicle mathematically. It's a rip-off. The average cost of capital,

quote, interest rate is 14.2 percent. And you're buying a new car, and it goes down in value like a rock and all of the

lost depreciation is built into the lease payment. You're financing something you cannot afford

to buy and you're calling it smart because of some little quasi tax break. No, do not do this.

It's a bad deal for you, honey. It's a bad deal. Everybody's trying to be sophisticated

here and you're going to step in a bear trap with it. Don't do it. Simply pay cash for your car,

and if they want to give you some more money at work, I'll take it. There's no 100% tax break.

Okay? So the only way this works is if you get a hundred percent right off otherwise you're

trading dollars for quarters you understand how that works no what do you mean by there's no

okay when you have a thousand dollar tax write off or you do something pre-tax a thousand

dollars you don't save a thousand dollars you save a quarter you save 250 dollars in Yeah, you save like 30%. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're

trading a dollar for 30 cents. Bad trade. For the extra you're paying on the lease is what you're saying.

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