One of the first questions that comes to mind when thinking of leasing a car is: "What will my monthly lease payment amount be?" or "How much can I save by leasing when compared to buying?"

Getting the answers can be as simple as using an online lease calculator such as the Lease Calculator from LeaseGuide.com, which calculates payments, finance charges, taxes, and total lease costs " by walking you through a number of easy steps in which you answer questions and input information about your lease.

Lease payment calculators use a standard leasing industry payment formula to determine monthly payment amount. Additional calculations are performed to determine other costs.

Even though you may not know some of the factors you need to plug into the calculator, you can guess or make some assumptions. Then you can go back and change some of the factors to see how it affects the results. In this way, you can play with the calculator to get the answers you want.

If you have all the figures about a specific lease deal from your dealer " lease price (cap cost), down payment (cap cost reduction), lease-end value (residual), length of lease (term), and finance rate (money factor) " you can check the honesty of your dealer's payment calculations by using an online lease calculator. A dealer's figures should exactly match yours. If not, then the dealer is using numbers that he has not accurately disclosed to you. If you both are using the same numbers as input to your calculations, the results will be precisely the same " to the penny.

If you want to compare the cost of leasing to the cost of buying, use a Lease vs. Buy Calculator. Based on the input figures that you provide, you can easily see the difference between buying and leasing.

Lease payments are always smaller than loan payments for the same vehicle. However, this does not necessarily mean leasing is right for you, nor does it mean that a specific lease is a good deal. To understand this better, see the Lease Guide for more details.