I'm getting rid of my car.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After the annual post-Christmas credit-card post-mortem, I realised that things have to change. I have a fairly well-paid job, and yet I have no money. It’s taken a while to figure it out, but the reason is my car.

I pay vast sums of money to own and run a car, and the vast majority of the time I merely use it to sit in endless traffic on the way to the train station 6 or 7 miles away. I live with my girlfriend, who owns a car I can borrow at weekends, so I don’t have to go without wheels altogether.

I wrote down the figures and it astonished me.
Monthly repayments: £420. Okay, those are due to end in April, but I was still going to buy a new and cheaper (second-hand) car after that which would have cost around £5,000.
Petrol: £70-£100. Car does 20mpg if I’m lucky on short journeys. Petrol in the UK costs an obscene amount.
Car parking at the train station: £3.50 x 4 days a week = £56.
Insurance: £650 a year = £54
Road tax: £165 a year = £14

That’s well over £600 a month, or £7,200 a year, and I haven’t even accounted for servicing, new tires, etc etc.

So this week I have cycled to a different station, about 3 miles away, taken my bike on the train and cycled 3 miles to work at the other end instead of taking the Tube.

Not taking the Tube cuts my train fare by another £20.80 a week, or over £1,000 a year.

Each bike leg of the journey takes only 20 minutes, which is actually QUICKER than the old method, with the possible exception of driving home late at night on empty roads. It seems pretty painless, even in a rain shower this morning. I figure with the cash I’m saving I can get some pretty good waterproof gear…
Have I really been spending nearly eight and a half grand a year just so I can sit on my arse swearing at traffic for half an hour a day? :eek:

Any ideas what I should spend my new-found wealth on?

2

New car?

3

Hookers and beer?

4

I have to ask what sort of car you were driving that was costing you that kind of coin. Assuming the exchange rate is about 1.5(pounds) to $1US, you’re making about 3 of my current car payments. Ouch!

5

The Human Fund.

6

Actually the exchange rate is about $1.97 = £1.
£420 is $825 approx.

I have a Mazda RX-8. The basic repayment is about £400, plus £20 payment protection which in retrospect I shouldln’t have bothered with.

If you really want your eyes to water, I should inform you that petrol in the UK works out at $6.71 per gallon (and incidentally how long has Google had that nifty feature?)

7

Holy shit, that car is expensive in the UK. It’s much more reasonably priced here in the states.

Anyhow, ditching that vehicle to drive your girlfriend’s will certainly be a step down in terms of driving excitement (or maybe not, what does she drive?) but I can sure see it as far as monthly savings goes.

8

Yeah. Replace “car” with just about any item you care to mention, except possibly Marmite and Dairy Milk chocolate. This country, and especially London, just sucks money out of you.

A Renault Clio, so yes. Still, I’ve had my fun with my car, done a couple of track days etc. I’ll be 30 in a couple of months so I guess it’s time to stop pissing the money away on frivolity. (Apparently the money I save can go towards a new kitchen, or so I’m told :rolleyes: )

9

You might consider getting a scooter. 85mpg, no costs to park, although you will have to shell out for the clothing and good lock and chain.

I’m amazed you would pay so much for a car, the values of used cars have fallen through the floor.

I’d just take a six month sabbatical from cars, and with the money you save, collect it and pay for one cheapie and have no other finance to keep it up.

You certainly don’t need to pay £5k for a reasonable used car, and as for 20mpg, well that’s plain crazy, that alone would put me off the damn thing.

Something like a four year old Fiesta would cost very little to run and insure, and certainly would not cost £5k.

I’ll never understand how folk will sink money into cars, which virtually always depreciate in value as well as costing a goodly amount to run, when you can get something far more modest, and put the rest into something worthwhile, like training and education, or into saving up for a house, or something that is much more likely to produce a return, even antiques would be a better option than a car, and would also be something to enjoy owning.

10

Well, if you liked the RX-8. a FD RX-7 is the logical next step. :slight_smile:

11

To be honest I think I will stick with the cycling. When I used to live in London I quite often cycled into work, which was over 12 miles in each direction and took less than an hour. So 6 miles, split into two three-mile stints with a rest on the train in between, is nothing really. Plus the exercise wakes me up, and the route to work from the station (not my photo!) is pretty cool, as commutes go.

12

I would love to ditch my car and take the bus or bike, but as I work 15 km out of town (and the powers that be have yet to realize that a train to Nisku/Leduc/Calgary is an astoundingly good idea), it’s not going to happen.

If I could, I’d get some books, or games for my DS, or an MP3 player, or whatever makes the bus ride 10x as fun as steering a car through traffic 10 times a week. :frowning:

My 3 grand mountain bike is less than 20$/mo to insure against anything… you could go nuts on a sweet new ride. :slight_smile:

13

Actually this is the pic I meant to post, which despite the dodgy Photoshop job shows off the “glass testicle” that I cycle past in a better light.

14

As someone who last owned a car in 1986, I applaud your move Colophon. If you’ve got access to good public transport, cars are a complete waste of money. You’ll be miles better off financially, even if you use taxis or have to rent a car occasionally for the odd special trip.

15

Congrats on deciding to be car free! I am moving to NYC in a few months and one of the big selling points for me was the access to public transportation. I am just counting down the days until I don’t need a car anymore! I have a used car with no payments, and when I take into consideration the gas/insurance/oil changes/repairs/etc that I put into the car I realized I spend about $300 a month on my car. I will be able to cut my transportation costs by almost 2/3 with my move and that will definately help make up for the difference in cost of living. (Not to mention I never have to worry about getting pulled over or getting a ticket ever again and the increase in the amount of excersize I will get!)

16

I went about six months without a car last year, and it was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. Now, I live in the States, in the Atlanta area, where public transportation is nowhere near as comprehensive or convenient as in the UK, but even so, I managed. My ten-year-old Honda Civic gave up the ghost in December of 2005. Having not had to make a car payment on it in five years, I wasn’t eager to start again, so my wife and I decided to ride it out as long as possible. Even though we have three kids, we did pretty well. It helped that I was traveling a lot (nearly every week) for work, so my car had been spending lots of time in the parking deck at the airport anyway. I’d get my wife to drive me to the train station to catch the train to the airport when I headed out each week, and either take the train and a taxi or just a taxi all the way home, depending on the time and my degree of exhaustion. My wife and kids and I usually are all together in one vehicle on the weekends anyway, so other than occasional situations where one kid needed to be one place and other needed to be someplace else at the same time, we managed pretty well from December to the end of July.

I changed jobs in July, and in my new gig I’ve needed to drive about 130 miles from home to the customer site at the beginning of each week and back home again at the end of the week. It’s too short a trip to fly (the airport is almost halfway there), and there’s no train service or any other viable public transportation, so getting a new car was pretty much a necessity. When we did buy something, we dipped into savings to be able to pay cash for over half the purchase price, to keep the payments as low as possible. I figure, based on the monthly payment, that we saved a few thousand dollars just by enduring some occasional minor inconveniences, which made it easier to make a bigger downpayment when we did take the plunge.

It no doubt helped that I’d prefer to live without a car if I could – I’ve spent considerable amounts of time in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, where having a car is unnecessary, and always preferred being able to walk, take public transport, or a cab wherever I needed to go. I even managed in Atlanta for several years in my twenties without a car, though it wasn’t easy by any means.

17

I paid about £7,500 for my car, that was nearly four years ago, and it spends an awful lot of time sitting on the drive not going anywhere. Still, it’s comforting to know that it’s there and driveable if I need to get somewhere in a hurry. I have an elderly parent living in sheltered housing about 80 miles from me and as I’m the closest relative (and the one she’s most likely to call upon), I need to know that I can get over to her easily.

Public transport is good where I live and I use it for my daily commute to work - it’s cheaper than driving and takes about the same amount of time but I can read a book instead of swearing at other drivers. Getting over to mum’s by public transport would be possible but a right headache and would take much longer than driving.

Still, if you can manage without the car then good on you! I manage without it most of the time, but it’s good to know there’s a vehicle available if I need it.

18

Well I don’t have to go without entirely, as I can borrow my girlfriend’s car at weekends, plus on Fridays (when I don’t work) as long as I make the effort to get up and go with her to work so that I can take the car for the day and pick her up later.

The only snag now is I’ve got to actually sell the thing. Maybe it’s time for a “How not to get ripped off when selling a car” thread…

19

Heh, you don’t want to know how much I pay (maintenance, insurance, gas @ $5.59/gal) for my 13-year-old FD. :slight_smile: But at least I don’t have a car payment for it!

20

Well, for complete nutters like you, the LS7 is the obvious next step. Lighter than original (even with the stronger heavier transmission), Reliable, 31mpg on the highway, and you only have to change 2 letters on the badge. :slight_smile: