Lease Kilometre Planning for Vaughan Drivers: Count Before You Sign

When someone leases a Honda from me, we spend a lot of time on the model, the trim and the payment. The kilometre allowance usually gets about thirty seconds, and it’s the choice most likely to cost money at the end. Pick too low and you pay for every extra kilometre when you hand the car back. Pick too high and you’ve paid in every monthly payment for kilometres you never drove. Neither mistake is dramatic on the day you sign. Both show up three or four years later, when it’s too late to change them.

The fix is simple: count, don’t guess. Here’s the worksheet I use at the desk.

Step 1: count a normal week

Most people underestimate because they think about the commute and forget everything else. Write down four numbers:

1. Your round-trip commute. Home to work and back, in kilometres. If you work from home some days, count only the days you actually drive in.
2. Commuting days a year. A full-time office schedule is roughly 48 working weeks after holidays and vacation. Hybrid work cuts this a lot.
3. Everything else in a normal week. Groceries, kids’ activities, the gym, visiting family. People in Vaughan, Maple and Kleinburg tend to drive more for errands than they expect, because most errands need a car.
4. The big trips. The cottage, a drive to Montreal, holidays with family in another city. These are the kilometres people most often leave out.

Step 2: do the math with your own numbers

Here’s a worked example. These are made-up numbers to show the method, so use your own:

• Commute: 50 km round trip × 5 days × 48 weeks = 12,000 km
• Weekend and errand driving: 100 km a week × 52 weeks = 5,200 km
• Two cottage weekends at 600 km each = 1,200 km
• Total: 18,400 km a year

If you’re trading in a car, there’s a better number than an estimate: your real one. Take the odometer reading today, subtract the one from about a year ago, and you have your actual yearly driving. The service entries on your CARFAX Canada report, or your last service invoice if you kept it, usually show a dated odometer reading.

Step 3: add a buffer, then pick the allowance

Lives change during a lease. A new job, a second child, a parent who needs rides to appointments. I suggest adding about 10% to your total. In the example above, 18,400 km plus 10% is a little over 20,000 km a year. That points to the allowance at or just above that number, not the one below it.

The allowances available, and how each one changes the payment, depend on the model and the month’s program. That’s why I show the options side by side on a written quote rather than quoting one here. The CR-V lease guide for Ontario and the Civic lease guide walk through how the allowance fits with the rest of the lease.

Step 4: check your pace at the halfway point

This is the step almost nobody does, and it’s the one that saves the most money. Divide the total allowance by the number of months in the lease, then multiply by the months you’ve had the car. On a 48-month lease at 20,000 km a year, the total is 80,000 km, which works out to about 1,667 km a month. At month 24 you should be near 40,000 km.

If you’re well over at the halfway point, you still have options. You can shift some driving to a second car, or start planning to buy the vehicle at the end of the lease instead of returning it. Your lease agreement states the buyout amount and the charge for each extra kilometre, so read those two numbers before you decide. My lease return guide covers the end-of-lease choices in order.

When you’re ready to put real numbers on it, text me your yearly total from the worksheet and the model you’re considering. I’ll send the lease at two allowances and a finance option on one page, or you can book a test drive and we’ll do it at the desk.