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All those years back, you took a car on lease and drove it without a care in the world. You took excellent care of it as if it were a family member, buying the best gas and keeping it clean and shiny.

Now, the time has come for the lease to end and a real family member, (in flesh and blood, of course), along with you is wondering “why not make it ours?” You see the sense behind this, and decide to take the plunge in owning that reliable darling of yours that you had been most comfortable with and had only been wishing was yours. Now is the time to take some important steps in arriving at that decision, and weigh the pros and cons of owning the car that you had leased till now.

One of the simplest ways of estimating the car’s worth is to calculate what in automobile market terminology is referred to as the residual value. In simple words, this is assigning an approximate number of years to the remainder of the car’s life, and subtracting from it the cost the car has already incurred by way of its having been with you for the lease period. For the normal lease period, i.e., three years, the current value given is half its on-road price.

For instance, let’s assume you took on a lease of a sexy, sleek Mercedes whose price was $100,000 at the start of the lease period. Now, it assumes a value of $50,000, plus other charges the leasing company may have set as part of the deal, such as the purchase option fee. So, simple common sense dictates that you need to spend another $50,000 to own your priceless beauty! True, in most such cases, it may seem like you are coughing up more than you thought it was worth. But bear in mind the fact that you’ve driven it for three years. Moreover, it is a car that you know very intimately!

There is a simple method for finding out if you’ve got the best deal the market has to offer, just go around checking a car with similar conditions as yours with a multitude of dealers, then settle for the best deal! Then, of course, there is always the bargaining done on any such deals. Just offer your price, and try to extract discounts from the company which they’re almost certain to do. Not because of any love for you, but because they had leased you at a higher price in the beginning, with the prospect of offering you ownership at the end of the lease period. This way, you own what you wanted to own, making your family happy in the process!

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as car buying at www.newcarbuyingsecrets.com

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Given that all the roadside hassles that will result when you car breaks down will pale in comparison to the problems you will have if you do not properly have the right plans to take care of your car’s troubles, it might be a good idea for car owners to invest in a suitable warranty for their car. The main issue that comes up in the repairing of broken down cars is that of cost. It can cost you an arm and a leg to fix a broken car, especially if you don’t have any knowledge of how to do basic repairs yourself.

In this case, getting an extended warranty to cover all the incidentals that will occur to you and your vehicle is better than good sense, it is a sound investment. And, unlike a standard warranty, which ends after a set period of time, usually one that is very short, the extended warranties offer a fuller and more comprehensive package that will protect and repair your car for a long period of time.

Because you never can be certain what potholes the next turn conceals, or of the slight imperfections that contribute to massive and expensive errors occurring in the lifetime of every car, extended warranties will offer you the best protection. They offer wide coverage that is designed to ensure that whatever problem you encounter, or virtually all the troubles that you come across with your car, will be taken care of.

While other warranty plans will offer some or all of the cost of repairs when you car breaks down, an extended warranty does them one better. It provides almost always a full coverage of all repair related costs as well as giving you another car to drive around in, to get back and forth from the places you need to, while your car is in the shop getting fixed up. And it should go without saying that this sort of service will be even more important as your car starts to get up there in years, as the likelihood of a breakdown just increases as your car ages.

What’s more, the providers of extended warranty plans value extended warranty customers more so than they do customers of standard warranties. This is shown by the fact that they give more services to those who sign up for extended warranties than they do to those who sign up for standard warranties. For instance, a company that provides extended warranties usually will have all of the claims sent to it resolved with a business day or two. They do this to ensure that you lose the least amount of time and money on account of the problems with your car.

Given that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that can provide you with an extended warranty, the field is rife with competition, a fact that drives down the cost of extended warranties and gives you the widest possible choice. If you are looking for an extended warranty, the best place to start looking is on the net. Go to the engine of your choice and search for what providers offer that suits you.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as a new car buying at http://www.newcarbuyingsecrets.com.

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