Um. Well, sure. You’ve ended relationships before, right? And did that ever happen without costing something? Same with a lease. It’s a relationship. And ending it before the other party was planning on ending it is bound to cost something, in most cases.

Leases are basically a long-term finance contract (12 months and up). The payments are based on spreading depreciation over X months. If you shorten the months abruptly, that depreciation has got nowhere to go. However, signing a 36 month lease doesn’t mean you absolutely have to keep that vehicle for 36 months. Often, about two-thirds of the way into the lease, the value of the vehicle and the payoff on the lease start to cross paths, and it is possible to find yourself with equity in a vehicle (when the payoff is less than the value) before the lease ends.

Whether or not that happens depends on all kinds of factors, some of which you control, and some you don’t. The market for used vehicles is a lot like the stock market, it runs up and down all the time, with a general trend up, over the long term. Just like you can’t control the stock market (The Controlling The Value of Public Markets appears to be a position reserved for The Very Rich. And you aren’t. Or you wouldn’t be reading this plebeian little blog), you can’t control the trends in the used-vehicle market. But you can control how well you maintain your vehicles, how many miles you allow them to rack up, and how you equip them – it matters. Color matters. Weird things matter when it comes to used-vehicle values.

So yes, you can give it back when you want to. But it would be helpful if you did it strategically, and not just on a whim.