Well, personally, I financed and leased before and I can tell you that leasing IS the better and smarter solution from my own point of view. Here's why:
With leasing you can simply sign and drive, zero out of pocket and boom you have a brand new, reliable car with no mechanical problems and lower monthly payment than finance. With leasing, if you decide not to replace the car after the end of your leasing term, you can simply buy the car and "finance" the residual value Now the money that you would save by not putting ANY money down, can be invested in your 401K plan or any other investments (brokerage account?) and that should earn you in this bullish market an average of 8-10% percent depending on your risk level. To me this is a much smarter decision than throwing money in a moving, depreciating object. As far as mileage, to me it's the same thing, you lease a car, you go over mileage you will pay the overage and move on (unless you are leasing a new vehicle from the same dealership and in this case they will eat the mileage difference or melt it in the new payment). When you finance, and you go over the national average of 12K miles/year, your financed car will take a hit when it's time to trade it in (probably by the same amount of money you would have paid for the mileage overage). So, no matter how you look at, it's all math at the end and because it's math, it MUST make sense.
The only way I see myself financing is if I buy something like the C7 or another Camaro. Now with those cars, understandably you would wanna modify them somehow, maybe replace the exhaust, tint the window, etc... in this case leasing is not the best option for you. Also the money factor and residual value used for leasing sports car are terrible so you're better off financing.
Hope this helps