Tips on Buying Cars: Need to get out of a lease, mileage charge, excess mileage

Question
I currently am in a lease on a 2004 Sequoia Ltd 4x4.  I made the mistake of not doing my homework when I leased it and ended up in a 5 year lease with a 60k allowance on miles.  I have almost 22 months left and am at 58K miles. The payoff on the car is  $31,600, leaving me with an upside down of prob around 7-8k depending on what price is assessed for my car.  The way I look at it, at the current rate of how many miles i put on the vehicle i'll be prob 25k to 30k miles over at the end of the lease.  With maintenance costs (brakes, tires, 60k mile service), and the $4000 roughly in overage i'll be close to $6k - $7k  from now until i get this car off of my hands.  so am i better of absorbing the upside down into a new lease or just waiting out the remaining time on the lease.

Answer
In this situation, the WORST mistake people make is to wait till the end of the lease, then buy the vehicle out for the original agreed-upon price.  They think that's smarter than paying the excess-mileage charge.  But the buyout price is based (in your case) on the vehicle having 60,000 miles.  If it has 100,000 miles at lease end, then it's not worth anywhere NEAR the buyout figure originally agreed to.  So, they but it out, and 6-12 months later they're faced with a mountain of repair bills, on a vehicle they owe $6-8,000 more than it's worth.  That's smart?!

Your best bet is a third option you haven't listed.  Park the Sequoia, pick up an inexpensive used car and put the miles on that for the remainder of the lease.  Even if you have to drive the Sequoia occasionally, the couple of extra thousand miles you'll pay for at the end of the lease will be the least expensive way out of this situation.  Cheap used cars have lost all their depreciation, so you should be able to turn around and sell it in a couple of years for close what you paid for it.