For myself, I will NEVER lease a car, ever. The reason is, in my line of work, we lease office equiptment to businesses. There are definitely situations where leases work out to the benefit of the CUSTOMER but not many times. We make SO much money from these customers -- they pay more for their equiptment in the long run; when the lease runs out we get their used equiptment back for free (and can turn around and re-sell it to the next customer); and then we lease them another brand new one, again for a nice tidy sum of $$$.

As for a car, IMHO, it is *so* much better to go find a used car that has just come off lease. The reason is that the first customer took the depreciation; the car is only a couple of years old, and in most cases still very reliable (of course, I would get it checked out by a mechanic whom I trusted); and because the first customer probably had a limit of how many miles they could drive, it likely has very low mileage.

My last 2 vehicles I have purchased like that, and I have only paid $4500 each for a 3 year old car. The first was a Dodge Stratus, and then I upgraded to a mini-van. If I had purchased the Dodge new, it would have been like $17,000; so in eight years, I have had 2 nearly new cars for $9000, and I am so far ahead of the game.

SO, is there anyway that you can get by for 2-3 months with this new raise, and just save your money aside, and come up with a downpayment??