4 months from closing, need to buy a new car. What to do?

[ccubedzx3]

Thank you everyone for the responses...I didn't mean to cause any disagreements!!  We are currently financing a vehicle that was $23,500 when we purchased it originally.  The payments are around $415/month and we still owe around $9800.   We were thinking of leasing a new Ford Explorer for $397 which is actually lower than our current payment of $415

Our current debts consist of (2) car payments, one at $415, and the other at $243.  We also have one credit card with a $2700 limit  that is down to 10% utilization, and another store card with 5% utilization.   We also have a student loan for $127/month.    We make $153,000 combined and currently are living in my parents home until our new home is complete, so we have no mortgage.  The way I calculate things, our DTI is about 6%.

I think we will weather the storm though, and be cautious.  Once we move we have quite the list of things to buy, in addition to a new vehicle.  I appreciate your insight and experiences. 

For Devils Advocate sake though, do you really think if we did trade in our $415/month vehicle for one that is $397, that it would cause much issue?

[StartingOver10]

What type of mortgage are you getting, conventional or goverment type (VA/FHA/USDA)?

How much are you putting down on the property?  Do you have a price point you are targeting? Have you figured out your potential taxes and insurance yet? If you have all these figures, than it is easier to be a little more accurate with you.

Since you are closing in 4 months, with your current debt, if there were an issue with your back end ratio than you could pay down the existing vehicle payment to less than 10 months remaining and the debt wouldn't be included in your back end ratio for many mortgage lenders. That is worst case senerio and would be a relatively small amount to pay toward the vehicle given your current figures the payoff to bring it to that point is less than $6k to totally eliminate that payment from your total debt ratio.

If your taxes and insurance are not high in your area, then you don't have any issues with your back end ratio and nothing to worry about. If you have selected a home it's easier to determine if the figures work, but it really looks like you have nothing to worry about because you have very little debt from your post.

[MovingForward_2012]

Simple answer from me...no and no problem.

Your financials are stellar. Some folks in these forums are really against the concept of leasing in any way, shape, or form due to past experience they are NOT willing to share. You have to be in tune with that to know if you are getting a straight answer or not that is not based on the ghost financials of a stranger's past. Honestly, you would be completely fine. I would put your final decision on what your LO says, not what we say. You said you are 4 months out, which is a really long time! Do you even have a LO yet? Have you been preapproved? If not, I would swap out cars before you are preapproved and locked in. The other nice thing about a lease is you won't carry all that negative equity which shoots the price of the car above MSRP. Once my lease is done, I'm done with the negative equity of my trade in vehicle.