<p>oldfort, my DH does prepay mileage on his car for miles he will drive above the amount that is allowed in the lease. This is because he puts on nearly 100k miles in 3 years!!! When we prepay, usually it runs 5 cents per mile and it can be incorporated into the monthly payment. If one pays on the back end, the cost is around 10 cents per mile. Depending upon what you lease, sometimes you can get money back if you bought too many miles, but other times you just eat that loss.</p>
<p>I guess that’s worth your while. I have never put that many miles on my car, at most 20k/yr sometimes. Just out of curiosity, if your H prepays for so many miles before hand, wouldn’t the residual value go down quite a bit?(45000 miles vs 100k miles). I am just surprised a leasing company would allow him to prepay for so many miles.</p>
<p>ucsd - had the belt replaced at 60k (it is part of the recommended 60k, 120k, etc maintenance.) so this one is the second one. Actually it’s the third one. It was squeaking like crazy when I got home after its scheduled maintenance so I took it back and they put on a new one due to a faulty belt. Then after about 90k it started squeaking so I tightened it. Now it’s back to squeaking again at 115k and I really don’t think it should be tightened anymore… cause you know you can only tighten them so far before they break. It just needs to be replaced. It’s really not that expensive.</p>
<p>My car has two serpentine belts - this is the one that controls the a/c and the defroster… so it’s kind of seasonal that it does it’s squeak. If it’s really cold and I’m defrosting the front window, and if it’s really hot and I’m running the air.</p>
<p>The only money I’ve put into this car are some tires, brakes once, inspection (has never taken anything), headlight bulbs, passenger side window (car got broken into), the belts at maintenance time, my spark plugs and such which I did myself, and my oil changes which I do myself. Oh and about six months ago my dad told me I should be proactive and put in a new battery since I was still on the original one and he was afraid it would putz out and let me sit somewhere, so I replaced that as well. So as you can see (knock on wood) it’s been pretty good to me. Not too bad for something I paid $8k for as a college student 8 years ago! </p>
<p>I’m a huge do it yourselfer when it comes to cars. I just haven’t found anything to fix my paint. I’ve tried all sorts of waxes and things like that. Maybe I could take it to a place to see about clear coat or something. I really don’t want to go to like a maaco type of a place. I know they are inexpensive but I don’t think their quality is very good at all. Sometimes you get what you pay for.</p>
<p>To be honest with you I have looked into paint jobs with friends in the past and it almost always came out cheaper for the place to repaint the whole darn car then just one or two panels because they didn’t have to do any sort of paint matching or anything like that. I still can’t imagine that it’s really cheaper to do that but that’s what we were told at like four or five different places.</p>
<p>Insurance shouldn’t be too bad on the cars I’m looking at…</p>
<p>I like Toyota Corolla S’s, Mazda 3 iTourings, and Mitsubishi Lancers. (Mother bought a Mazda 3 i Touring Value). I’m trying to keep the payments for the car under 200 a month so unless I lease it a new one is out… but used could happen. Or I’ll just keep going with what I have and try to fix it up a little.</p>
<p>oldfort, we don’t lease through a leasing company. We lease through a car dealer. Not all car makers allow you to lease that many miles, but enough do. He leases from the maker that does allow it at the time he is ready to do a deal. The residual value is always very high when we turn in the car, and we never buy it. Oh, and he has not leased a luxury car in years. He did lease on luxury car many years ago because the deal at that time was amazing! He normally leases a nice cross over.</p>
<p>I also looked at a Nissan Versa but I don’t know much about it…</p>
<p>I think for right now I’m just going to keep my ears and eyes open and see if anything pops up. There’s nothing insanely wrong with my current car so I’ll probably just keep it for right now and get a new belt… I’m not paying money to re-paint the thing… so I’ll keep it till I see some crazy good deal that comes along . (That’s how I got this car in the first place… completely on a whim, wasn’t even looking to buy a car…) I walked to about 10 car dealerships today and didn’t find any “crazy good deals”.</p>