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Cars are a terrible use of money

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Got me curious about my own car's cost per month.

Gas: $60/month (4 gallons/week @ 3.75/gallon)
Insurance: $127/month
Maintence: $0/month (unless something comes up, like an oil change)
Parking: $0

Getting an extra 2 hours in my day from not sitting in traffic or on a bus: Fucking. Priceless.
 
When I looked at total operating costs it kind of bummed me out that my company truck is worth more on an hourly operating basis than I am.
 
xanis said:
Got me curious about my own car's cost per month.

Gas: $60/month (4 gallons/week @ 3.75/gallon)
Insurance: $127/month
Maintence: $0/month (unless something comes up, like an oil change)
Parking: $0

Getting an extra 2 hours in my day from not sitting in traffic or on a bus: Fucking. Priceless.
Click to expand...

You don't know how maintenance works do you bro?
 
I agree I find the way society works is really inefficient, we should have more money go into public transit and have a better system for getting places so that we don't all need a car.

It should also be more standard to be able to work from home. A huge amount of jobs could easily be done at home instead of burning energy and time to go back and forth day after day.

Though what I can't get over even more is how many people buy brand new vehicles. That is probably the worse way you can spend 20-40k when a used one worth 1/10th of what it was worth when new will do the same job.

Even if I end up having to put 500 bucks into my car because something major breaks, I know that if it was new, I'd probably be paying that per month anyway, and still have to put money into it when something breaks when past warranty.

My city has a population of about 45k yet the traffic is just ridiculous at 8-9am, 12-1pm and 4-5pm and most of that traffic is people going to/from work. Right now if you want to take public transit, the bus only passes every half hour, in some cases every hour, then you have to transfer, so it can take like 1-2 hours to get anywhere using the bus. Make public transport more efficient and people could perhaps use it more.
 
K1052 said:
I think both you and the OP may have a problem envisioning that different places are....different.
Click to expand...
I don't see how you could possibly come to that conclusion when it's my exact point. Hence the "that's great it works for you", IE different.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I agree I find the way society works is really inefficient, we should have more money go into public transit and have a better system for getting places so that we don't all need a car.

It should also be more standard to be able to work from home. A huge amount of jobs could easily be done at home instead of burning energy and time to go back and forth day after day.

Though what I can't get over even more is how many people buy brand new vehicles. That is probably the worse way you can spend 20-40k when a used one worth 1/10th of what it was worth when new will do the same job.

Even if I end up having to put 500 bucks into my car because something major breaks, I know that if it was new, I'd probably be paying that per month anyway, and still have to put money into it when something breaks when past warranty.

My city has a population of about 45k yet the traffic is just ridiculous at 8-9am, 12-1pm and 4-5pm and most of that traffic is people going to/from work. Right now if you want to take public transit, the bus only passes every half hour, in some cases every hour, then you have to transfer, so it can take like 1-2 hours to get anywhere using the bus. Make public transport more efficient and people could perhaps use it more.
Click to expand...

You guys are canadian, we should make that country a parking lot for NY.
 
I could buy a town-home near my workplace, but I would get half the floor space for twice the price. And that would only get me out of a car and not the working wife. And when it rains I'd get wet. Umbrellas and raincoats do not make you impervious to rain.

I ahte driving for work, but it beats being unemployed or working at Walmart.
 
Phoenix86 said:
I don't see how you could possibly come to that conclusion when it's my exact point. Hence the "that's great it works for you", IE different.
Click to expand...

My comment was mainly directed at the 2nd part of your post.

Paid parking, let alone at one's home, is almost unthinkable some places (like DFW) but is commonplace in a lot of major metro areas.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Actually NY and other mega cities should be converted to rainforests. It would do good for the planet.
Click to expand...

Actually the mega cities like NY that pack a lot of people into a small area are good for the planet (as far as cities go). It's the sprawling ones that are bad.
 
alkemyst said:
You don't know how maintenance works do you bro?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I re-read that and realized it made no sense. I actually just shelled out $400 for an alignment and rotor resurfacing, and just got my oil changed. I'll have to buy some new wipers soon as well.
 
tokie said:
Total hours driving per month: 60 hours
Insurance: $100/month
Parking: $100/month (including land value of parking at home)
Gas: $240/month (assuming 30mpg, $4 per gallon of gas, and 30 mph average speed)
Cost per hour of driving: $7.33

This does not include the actual price of the car, which for many Americans is > $10,000. It also does not include maintenance.

If you have access to car-sharing services like Zipcar, which costs around $9/hour, then why would you own a car? With internet shopping, home delivery, taxis/Uber, and cheap car rentals it makes no sense to me.
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From your own calculations, owning a car is cheaper. It's really lame that zipcar costs so much considering that privately owned cars have a utilization rate of less than 10% as you say. We need a more realistic calculation though. Zipcar also charges you $9/hr for every hr you are using their car but not driving. This is the real problem. You spend most of your time with your car parked somewhere as you do something so the true cost of zipcar is much more. The way you do your calculations, a privately owned car is essentially free while not moving. Also, a privately owned car has very large purchase and maintenance costs too of course.

As others have said, people in the first world have money to burn compared to people in the 3rd world so that is why we all own cars.

However, your point about the economic inefficiency of cars is true. When self driving cars come, I expect a revolution in car usage. A self driving car mostly solves the problem of carrying costs while parked which is the problem which makes zipcar so expensive. It will also drive down costs even more by allowing automatic, dynamically scheduled car sharing.
 
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Red Squirrel said:
I agree I find the way society works is really inefficient, we should have more money go into public transit and have a better system for getting places so that we don't all need a car.

It should also be more standard to be able to work from home. A huge amount of jobs could easily be done at home instead of burning energy and time to go back and forth day after day.

Though what I can't get over even more is how many people buy brand new vehicles. That is probably the worse way you can spend 20-40k when a used one worth 1/10th of what it was worth when new will do the same job.

Even if I end up having to put 500 bucks into my car because something major breaks, I know that if it was new, I'd probably be paying that per month anyway, and still have to put money into it when something breaks when past warranty.

My city has a population of about 45k yet the traffic is just ridiculous at 8-9am, 12-1pm and 4-5pm and most of that traffic is people going to/from work. Right now if you want to take public transit, the bus only passes every half hour, in some cases every hour, then you have to transfer, so it can take like 1-2 hours to get anywhere using the bus. Make public transport more efficient and people could perhaps use it more.
Click to expand...

So you go to the store to load up on groceries and spend $100-125, are you really wanting to haul 7-8 bags of stuff on a damm bus and take 2 hours to get it back home?, fuck no, your frozen items would be a half-thawed mess by the time you got home.
 
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