How much should you put down on a lease?

Every lease quote carries a profile: a number of rentals taken up front, then the rest paid monthly. A 9+47 profile means nine rentals with the order and 47 afterwards.

The thing most people get wrong is treating the upfront payment as a deposit. It is not. It is rent paid early, and it does not come back to you at the end of the contract.

What it does do is change your monthly figure. Move from one rental up front to nine and the monthly drops noticeably, because the same total is spread across fewer remaining payments. Look at the total payable and the two profiles land within a few pounds of each other.

So the question is not which profile is cheapest. It is whether you would rather hold on to your cash now or pay less each month. If the money would otherwise sit in an account earning very little, a larger upfront is efficient. If you are protecting a cash buffer, take the smaller one and accept the higher rental.

One genuine exception: if there is any chance you will need to end the contract early, a smaller upfront leaves less money committed to a vehicle you may not keep.