Skip the Car
By Mike Hillyer | Related entries in Automotive, Spend LessHere’s another way to save money on cars: don’t own one at all.
According to my latest copy of Reader’s Digest, it costs almost $10,000 a year to drive a Dodge Caravan 18,000 KM a year including payments, depreciation, insurance, gas, and maintenance.
$10,000 a year! Now of course not all of that is actual cash outlay, such as the depreciation, but that is still a chunk of change.
You could spend $100 a week on taxi rides and only spend ~$5200 a year, saving $4800.
Calgary Transit only charges $70 a month for a pass, or $840 a year. That is a lot of saved money. Heck, even if you rode the bus in town and rented a car once in a while for distance trips you would still be ahead.
So will I be selling my car? Probably not, I’m willing to pay for the convenience.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 and is filed under Automotive, Spend Less. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
April 11th, 2005 at 10:48 am
The Wealthy Blogger
April 11th, 2005 at 10:52 am
The Wealthy Blogger
April 11th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Hello,
Your comparison between the Dodge Neon and taxi rides is not very fair. If you took 18,000km worth of taxi rides it would cost much more than 10,000 since the taxi drivers also have to incur the same costs of depreciation, insurance etc.
So when you’re talking about $100 a week of cab rides, you are talking about travelling less than 18,000 km a year. In which case, the cost of owning the Dodge should be much lower than 10k.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:53 am
A few bloggers out there have talked about Total Cost of Ownership, specifically of cars. Almost makes you consider selling and going with something like this (in the DC area anyway):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8183-2005Mar28.html
April 11th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
Yannie: Dodge Caravan, not Neon, the Neon would have much lower costs overall. In addition, the Caravan may have been driven on longer trips when the bus or a cheap flight would have been better. In any case, I think the point the Reader’s Digest artile was trying to make is that owning a vehicle is not always the more economical thing you can do. YMMV.
April 11th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Skip the Car
Here’s another way to save money on cars: don’t own one at all. According to my latest copy of Reader’s Digest, it costs almost $10,000 a year to drive a Dodge Caravan 18,000 KM a year including payments, depreciation,…
April 26th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
A couple of issues here.
1. The majority of American cars guzzle more fule than a comparable Jap car.
2. It may seem like an obvious thing to say but it depends on ones situation. Living in a large city with public transport and readily available car hire, owning a car is a luxury. Living in a small town and being far from services, a car is absolutely necessary.
So the message kiddies?
Buy a small Japanese car and not something that looks like an SUV body plonked onto a semi-trailer.
July 8th, 2005 at 10:31 am
I don’t know if you know this but the term ‘Jap’ is considered a disparaging and discriminatory term. I know you did not intend it that way but I thought you might want to know.
November 8th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
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