1078 – The Pros and The Cons: Tom talks Vehicle Leasing

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion breaks down whether leasing a vehicle makes sense, especially for business owners, and explains that leasing is generally not recommended for personal use, but can make sense for businesses—if you understand the tradeoffs.
Pros of Leasing
• Lower monthly payments compared to buying
• Lower upfront costs (many fees are negotiable if you’re informed)
• Newer vehicles more often, typically every 2–3 years
• Access to newer technology
• Warranty coverage during the lease term, reducing major repair risk
• No resale hassle—just turn the vehicle in
• Tax deductibility for the business-use portion (often 100% if fully business use)
Cons of Leasing
• No ownership or equity—you never own the vehicle
• Endless payments if you keep leasing
• Higher long-term cost compared to buying and keeping a vehicle
• Mileage limits, with costly overage fees
• Wear-and-tear charges at turn-in, often subjective
• No customization allowed
• Animals usually prohibited in leased vehicles
• Early termination penalties if you end the lease early
• Numerous fees (disposition, document, application, prep, taxes), many of which can add thousands if not negotiated
Practical Advice
• Leasing can be fun and convenient, but it requires serious homework
• Many lease fees are negotiable if you know what to push back on
• Always detail the vehicle before returning it to minimize charges
• Calculate the true cost before talking to your accountant
• Compare leasing costs to buying and keeping a vehicle long-term
Tom’s Personal Take
• He leased Mercedes vehicles for years for business tax benefits
• Later switched to buying and keeping vehicles long-term (e.g., a fully paid-off Suburban still worth money)
• He’s not against leasing, but stresses informed decision-making
Bottom line:
Leasing can make sense for businesses—but only if you fully understand the costs, restrictions, and long-term implications. Do your homework first, then confirm with your accountant.

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Episode 1078 – Vehicle Leasing
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1078 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about some more hardcore business stuff, which is vehicle leasing, the pros and cons. I hope you didn't miss episode 1077. That was my Mickey Mouse boots, and that was a whole episode on how to buy stuff to get the best quality at the best prices and make sure it's good stuff. So that was 1077. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. Mickey Mouse Boots was 1077. All right, pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Just one of the tips. One of the tips in this book, we estimated, has saved me 9 million keystrokes. This is not an exaggeration. We actually estimate it. So pick up that book at. Free. It's version 3.0, which is the latest. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV.
[00:01:40] All right. Let's see. Most people before I get into this vehicle leasing, most people, most people, financial advisors and so forth say it's not a good idea to lease a vehicle if you're not in business, it is a good eye. It can be a good idea if you are in business, but I'm going to give you the pros and cons besides just the tax write offs that you can use. If you are in business of the use of vehicles or the the pros and cons of leasing a vehicle.
[00:02:19] All right. So let's get into the pros first. Well you usually can have a lower payment per month on the lease fees than a car payment. And there's usually lower upfront costs if you're smart about it. We're going to talk about acquisition fees and a whole bunch of fees that they try to get. You wish that can be negotiated away if you if you study up on it. Another pro is you have newer vehicles more often and you might take advantage of the newer technology in the vehicles. That's just rapidly increasing. So you're getting a new car every 2 or 3 years, or a new truck or whatever. You know, leasing you're doing, you usually don't have to worry about fixing any big stuff because it's you lease stuff within the warranty period of the vehicle. You don't have to worry about trying to sell it when you're when you want to move into a different vehicle, when the lease is up, you just turn it back in. And the big pro from the business standpoint is tax deductibility, at least for the business portion that you're attributing. Now, if it's a pizza delivery car that it's the only thing it's used for is pizza delivery. Well that's clearly 100% tax deductible. Although I'm not giving you accounting stuff. You know, I'm not technically qualified to give you accounting advice, but pretty much if it's used mostly, you know, or all for business.
[00:03:58] It's 100% tax deductible. All right. So those are some of the pros you can get in cheaper and newer stuff all the time. Don't have to worry about fixing things that aren't normal wear and tear things. You still have to put tires on it and change the oil and do that kind of stuff. Sure, but if something major goes wrong, you know it's not. It's usually under the warranty period. All right. The cons of it. Well, you're not building any equity in the vehicle. In other words, you have endless payments. You're just going to keep paying, paying paying. But you never end. And you never have a an asset that belongs to you. It doesn't belong to you. You're just renting it basically, or leasing it from somebody else. For instance, you know, I keep my cars in tip top shape and keep them forever, But I did lease for a long time. In fact, I leased Mercedes sedans for years and years and took the tax write off. Now, if you're using it part personal and part business, then your accountant will figure out some reasonable percentage that can be taken off for business. The only time I got rid of the sedans is when I got the protection dog business. And most. And this is one of the cons. Usually you're not supposed to have animals in a leased vehicle. So I had two German shepherds at the time. I couldn't get away with it.
[00:05:30] And then a bunch of pet little pet dogs. So that was the time when I switched to the suburban. But the suburban currently is 13 years old, but it's in tip top shape and no payments. You know, I think I financed it for five years back in the beginning, it was a $75,000 suburban, I think, and with a bunch of custom stuff. Oh, that's another thing you can't do customization on a leased vehicle. No you can't. Like, for instance, my suburban took out the back seats, put in a custom cage for the dogs, and, um, put a, uh, um, dual battery system in it and all that kind of stuff. You can't do that on a on a leased vehicle. But anyway, after the five years were up, no payments. See, I owned the vehicle, and it's still worth, I don't know, 13 to $20,000 because it's got low mileage and so forth. Now, if you put excessive wear and tear on a leased vehicle, they're going to charge you for it. And you're kind of at their mercy on how much they're going to charge you. And, uh, another con is that usually leasing is going to cost more. More dollars out in the long run. Like I said, because you never run out of payments. See, my payments stopped eight years ago on the suburban. Let's see what else we got here. Like I said, no customization and you can get a penalty if you try to turn it in before the lease period is up.
[00:07:15] That's called an early termination fee. And then they kind of get you on all kinds of stuff. And some of it's negotiable. Some of it isn't. This is where when if you decide to try to do this, you should really bone up YouTube videos and read everything you can because they throw all these fees on. And for people that don't know any better, they just pay them well. Many of them can be negotiated. Now they have a disposition fee of 3 to $500, and the numbers I throw out are just big averages. And you might listen to this a year later and maybe it's $700. Who knows. That's supposedly for just, you know, cleaning it up and getting it ready to resell. You know, they're making you pay for that. And that does bring up a thing. Try to keep the clean as thing as pristine as possible. Have it cleaned and detailed before you turn it in, so that the chances of them hitting you with something legitimate on wear and tear, or less. And also, if you get too much mileage, mileage, extra mileage fees, you know, they usually when you lease there's mileage restriction. And if you go over that it can be anywhere currently from $0.10 a mile to $0.50 a mile or more. So that's something you got to watch for. If you know you're going to be doing long trips and exceed the mileage, then you got to figure that cost in there.
[00:08:49] And then there's all kinds of potential taxes depending on where you live and where you, you you, you're leasing from. And then they have all these fees. The document fee, application fee a preparation fee. You really need to study all these. Because if you just take what they throw at you, you're going to probably be wasting thousands of dollars. A lot of these things are negotiable and can be, you know, eliminated altogether. So really, really bone up on it before you actually do this if you're going to do this. But anyway, there's there are pros and like I said, I did it for a long time with Mercedes driving fancy cars, newer cars with less money still was wasn't cheap. I'm not saying it's cheap, but still, if I'd have bought a Mercedes sedan, I would have paid a big down payment. An enormous price. High payments and all that stuff. Nowadays, I buy most of my stuff without financing, so I don't have any of the financing charges. But again, you got to watch for the cons. Yeah, it's a lot of fun to drive new stuff all the time, but but like I said, if you run over the mileage, if it's full of dog hair, if it's if you wear stuff out or if you're dents and dings all over it, they can charge you a fortune for those kinds of things, say. And then if you decide, hey, I want to turn this in early big, you know, fine for doing that.
[00:10:19] So there's a lot of cons too. I'm not against it, but it's something I want you to really think about before you actually do it. All right, so that's the pros and cons of leasing a vehicle. And uh, again, check with your accountant to see if it makes sense for you. And I would do your homework first before you went to the accountant to figure out, okay, what would this actually cost me to do this lease on a vehicle and then lay that out to the accountant so they don't have to do the homework and charge you for that, and then see if it makes sense for your business. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org, the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And it's a quality distance learning. And it's a boutique school. So you're not just lumped in with hundreds of other people, you get a lot of personal attention. It's distance learning. So it actually can be done with in conjunction with other schools that you're in, or if you're working for a living, uh, the lessons can be done at any time, day or night. All right. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.