I'm currently upside down on my SUV by at least 7,000. I went to the same Nissan dealer I purchased my car from in March of 2005. They were trying to put me into a leased 2006 Pathfinder to try to cover the negative equity. How is this done? I have no money to put down. Do I have other options in getting financed? Can I try a CU? Please advise. I really need to trade this car in. I recently moved 70 miles each way from my place of employment and the gas mileage on the Xterra is horrible.

We just add the upside down portion of money to either the retail installment contract or a retail lease contract.

If approved and you can stomach the payment, well then...........

You would get killed on mileage on a lease....70 miles each way to work,,,thats like 36k a year...most leases only allow 12k per year don't they ?

And the gas mileage of the Pathfinder isn't any better than the Xterra.

provided the consumer can stomach the payment a lease contract can be written with whatever mileage is necessary, usually the cap is around 25K annually.

Trading one SUV for another one is not going to save much gas. You'd really need to go into an economy car to make the gas savings practical, but then the price won't be high enough to allow burying the negative equity and an economy car may not be ideal if you have kids. Run the numbers and I think you'll conclude that you can buy a lot of gas for the Xterra for less than it will cost to trade.

It isn't good to lease for that many miles, you are going to drive at least 40K miles per year. After 3 years the car will have 120K miles so it will have a very low residual value. The payments would almost certainly be lower on a 60 month purchase contract.

Really the best solution in the long term is to do something about the 70 mile commute in the first place. Move your home and/or job so they are closer together. Or if you can get into a car pool with one other person that will cut your gas costs in half with no investment.

The above poster mk_378 has some good points. 70 miles 1 way is a huge commute. Can you work from home once or twice a week?

DH commutes quite a ways, but we recently traded a Chevy Malibu for a Toyota Camry where he gets roughly 25-30 mpg. But like the above poster said, you might not be able to swing that if you have more than 2 kids.

My husband and I was going to car pool. He drives his car one week and me the next. I could work closer to home, but with the extra gas, my salary is still higher than what I would get if I transferred. I see by everyone response trading in my Xterra would not be a good idea. Thanks everyone

Actually, people felt that buying a pathfinder would not be a good idea...