If you drive 30k+ miles/year, better to rent?

[slubu]

My friend drives 30,000 miles or more a year. His recent car brokedown after a few years and now he is renting a Hyundai or something for around 600/month. Since with renting there is no depreciation or maintenance costs, do you think this makes sense for someone who drives so many miles? Obviously a lease is of no value, so the other option is to finance a car.

Any thoughts?

[AndrewAZ]

No... If you read the rental agreement you are only allowed X amount of miles and then its 10 or 20 cents more a mile after that.

If its for work he can write it off on his taxes so just by the car. (preferably an SUV with a gross vehicle weight over 6k lbs so you can take advantage of bushes SUV tax cuts.

[slubu]

I thought almost all rentals are unlimited mileage, no?

[Couch]

Even if they're alloting him X number of miles per month, what hidden costs/fees do they have in renting a car for a year or more.

[slubu]

He is doint monthly rentals, switching the cars every month.

[stooken]

where is this guy going?!

i hit about 30k miles one year on my old car but that was only because i was going from nor cal to so cal twice a month.

[slubu]

He is in construction, drives to various job sites throughout socal everyday.

[mmm def]

well he is in construction but does he need a truck? if not buy a civic/corolla/yaris..with routine maintenance they will easily last 200k miles.

[AndrewAZ]

I was just thinking.. It would be cheaper to lease a honda and pay the milage overages than to rent a car for $600 a month.

Driving 15k miles over my BMW lease would only be 2,400 a year or 200 per month.. So add that to my base monthly payment of 411 (no money down). Thats $611 a month for 30k miles a year for a BMW. Assuming they will let me buy 15k miles over my lease.

[TurboFan]

Originally Posted by slubu

My friend drives 30,000 miles or more a year. His recent car brokedown after a few years and now he is renting a Hyundai or something for around 600/month. Since with renting there is no depreciation or maintenance costs, do you think this makes sense for someone who drives so many miles? Obviously a lease is of no value, so the other option is to finance a car.

Any thoughts?

Nope. Lease. Build in the miles. Shop around, they can be had. At my last company, ALL my sales guys leased. We were friggin pros at finding the deals. You can't always get a bimmer (I got lucky, I drive about 25k, and I leaseed), but you can always find someone willing to work a deal. We had fun with it, and they'd do a lot of 2fer or 3fer deals where they'd go to a dealer together and say hey, wanna sell 3 cars right now?

Another good bet is a CPO coming off a 2 year lease. They usually have 100k warranties, and if you shop around and can negotiate well, you can save a helluva lot of dough.

[mpimping]

finance a preowned 330 or something like that with low miles. like an 05...