Buying and leasing
The car price a monthly payment can buy, its true monthly cost, and a lease payment checked line by line.
Car Affordability Calculator
The most you can spend on a car for a monthly payment you can manage, with your down payment and trade-in, and the true monthly cost once running costs are added.
Auto Lease Calculator
A car lease payment checked line by line: the depreciation and rent charges, the money factor as an APR and back, tax, the total cost and any excess mileage.
Cash Back vs Low Interest Calculator
Compare taking a car maker’s cash back and financing elsewhere with taking its low promotional rate instead.
A monthly payment is not the cost of a car. The car affordability page turns a payment you can manage into the most you could borrow and spend, shows how a longer term buys more car at the price of more interest, and adds insurance, fuel, maintenance and depreciation to show the true monthly cost, often more than twice the payment. The auto lease page takes a lease quote apart the way Regulation M describes it: a depreciation charge for the value used up, and a rent charge set by the money factor, which is an interest rate divided by 2,400. It shares its arithmetic with the lease versus buy calculator, so the two always agree. Negative equity from a trade-in is carried in, not ignored.