I leased for the first time back in 2012 and bought out my lease and plan to hold til it dies. I didn't know what i was doing back then and am pretty sure I couldve done better on the monthly payments.
Long story short, I am leasing another family car now and wondering what people would suggest to ensure best price. What i figured I would do is get some prices online at a few dealers for the same car (no money down, best monthly price everything included) to arm myself with info when i got to a dealership nearby to purchase.
If you really want to get the best possible price, figure out what make, model, and options you want. That's what you're willing to pay for, period. Any other options are irrelevant to you and if you wind up getting a car with extra options, let the dealer throw them in for free or get a car built to spec.
Then make a list of dealers within a certain distance you can live with (e.g. 150 miles). And either use the internet or start calling around to them all. Tell them the exact make, model, options you want and ask for their best price. Tell them you are doing two rounds, narrowing the list to 10 dealers with the 10 best prices. Then in second round, lowest price wins. Tell them you aren't telling anybody what the other prices are (and stick to that, because they can call around and check).
You'll normally wind up with a pretty good price that way, although you might have to travel a few hours to pick up the car. Which shouldn't be any kind of big deal - you can still use the local dealership for service (or an independent shop for that matter).
Also, if you are thinking you're going to keep the car at the end of the lease, like you did with the last one, then don't lease. Buy it. You can always either trade it in for a new one (which lowers your taxes for the new car since you only pay tax on the gap between the sale price of the old car to the dealer, and the price of the new car). And with new cars, you can get pretty low finance rates these days if you have good credit.
Also, if you can get an interest rate under 3%, you should consider financing it even if you have the cash to buy it. Then stick the cash into a conservative investment that will hopefully net out over 5% or so for the lifetime of the loan. If you're lucky, you'll fund the car loan interest entirely and maybe even earn a profit.
