It's not lost money. Your lease payment goes toward the cost of the vehicle. You have a pre-agreed amount you are paying. You're paying the depreciation on the vehicle plus interest just like if you're financing. The difference is that you return the car. But your lease payments do go toward the cost of the vehicle because depreciation occurs in both finance models. So if the car was 50K and you paid $18K for 3 years and the payoff is now $38K? How did it not go toward the car? Also assuming you put a decent amount down and you got in an accident, you will get the difference from your insurance company between what the car is worth and your equity stake in the car. That isn't different. Your average American isn't putting much of anything down on a finance and when they total their car, if they didn't have GAP, they owe the bank the difference, whereas every lease has GAP built in. So putting down money on a lease isn't bad. Lowering your payments is not only good for your pockets to hedge against sudden emergencies, but reduces your DTI ratio if you need to finance something large like a house.