Thanks for your reply! Right now I'd more likely to buy the car. The way I was thinking was to spend less money monthly, but I got nothing after 3 yrs. I'll consider trade-in and finance..
All up to you, because the net result is the same in the end tbh.
ie the 25k car is close to 28k with taxes/fee etc. if you pay 14k worth of lease, the residual value on the car after 3 years is 14k. So you'll have paid 28k, and have a car worth technically 14k. If you ended up leasing, you pay 14k to drive the car for 3 years, and don't have a car at the end. But if you had 28k and spent 14k on the lease, you'll still have 14k at the end of 3 years.
In the end it's very similar. The idea I took is, I planned originally to Lease to buy. This way, if you leased for 3 years and decide you want to keep the car, you just pay the remainder of the balace (14k) and buy the car outright at the end. The benefit of this is that you can evaluate the car and see if it is something you want to keep. It's a little more expensive, I estimated for me it would cost about 700$ more to lease then buy vs buy outright. But as much as I like the car, I think I'll go AWD next car, so in a way I'm glad I don't have to deal with the car after, because you have to haggle with the dealers about trade in value, vs if you just kept your money, you know how much your money is worth... ie they may not give you 14k for your car after 3 years etc.
On the other hand if you love the car, you can keep it then, and know how the car was treated/previous driver handled the car (you)