While high quality cycle lanes would be nice, claiming that it is too dangerous to share the road with cars is nonsense. It’s fashionable to paint cycling as dangerous but the facts don’t bear this out – it’s actually safer per mile travelled than being a pedestrian!

It even compares favourably with driving once you take in to account the fitness benefits; cycling increases your life expectancy overall.

Save money, be healthier, live longer. Win, Win, Win.

This provides a false idea of the cost to drive.

It’s cost me .29 per mile. I had no finance charges since I paid cash.
I wonder though – should I count what I would have earned on the 9,000 had I invested it? Well, I guess not because then I would have had to finance the car – at a higher rate.

So I’m happy with 29 cents per mile. I’ve previously done better with older cars – especially the one with which I was in two minor accidents that paid me much more than I spent to repair them. But they were also junkers from the start – not much fun to drive. I’m now looking at a two-yr-old Prius.

I cannot justify the expense of a new car except for the desire factor. It is nice to drive a new car especially the number of miles I drive per year. I am also thinking of waiting until next year to buy the Lincoln MKX my wife leases. Not much of a point here just felt like rambling.

So, based on my brother buying a Ford Windstar in 07/1996 with 4 miles on it and selling it around 120K miles, I computed all elements of it including the fluctuations in gas prices (99c per gallon to $4 per gallon) as well as maintenance, insurance etc (ALL elements) and I came to $0.35 per mile.

I have the same identical van also (bought 2 the same day), and I am still running it so, I will give ‘actuals’ such as above, once I sell it or run it into the ground. If I run it into the ground, the salvage guy will give me $125 and I will plug that as a Sales Price of the Van. My current running computation based on a fictitous sales price (not sold yet) shows it at $0.41 per mile since I have less miles on it today. So, numbers can change ‘drastically’ (15%+) on a little variance.

So, I do not about your cars or vans, but that is my real world example. My Lexus is going to be much higher in price per mile, cause of a higher initial cost, but that is just the nature of what you feed in as variables.

AAA’s 50c+ is a bogus number for the future unless you go to dealers for fixing everything, and have bad practices (like changing oil at 3K miles when the manual says 7500 miles) or run the car on idle for too long (when you go into a store with your car running outside to keep it at comfortable temp) etc.

Kenny

I heard someone say something the other day that betrays a critical viewpoint upon our vehicles which way too many people hold. The man said to consider a vehicle as something which gets you from point A to point B, NOT as an investment. Financial decisions are not so easy to qualify as “right” or “wrong”, but a vehicle should be considered a financial decision. Anything which can give us all a little more literal (and financial) oxygen should be considered an opportunity to make the best choice.

Hands down, purchasing a used vehicle is the better financial decision. The older the vehicle, the less you lose to depreciation. If you absolutely must have a new vehicle, some buys are deceitfully terrible ideas. The very efficient Toyota Prius hybrid can be bought for around $22,000, but its hybrid system is extremely expensive to replace. The Honda Civic, with its $15,500 starting price and good efficiency and reliability, ends up becoming a better overall value.

I also applaud the person who talked about the car myth. If you live within 15 miles of work or school, then biking is an effective method of saving money, and even time. Some regions are better-equipped for bicycling than others, but this is a great option that should really be considered.

The major issue, however, is probably outside of the scope of this forum. The increased mobility that cars offered led to the creation of the SUBURBS, which in essence decentralized society and dissociated home and school from work. Perhaps this complete perversion of the idea of urban planning is the primary reason Americans spend so much more time driving and pumping gas than other societies. If we can refocus our society to centralize our urban models, we can do more with a smaller space. Hong Kong and Tokyo are perfect examples. Perhaps Manifest Destiny spoiled us with so much land that we are now reaping the consequences of it. More should be done with less.

Obviously, I have gone beyond the literal question of what is the best and cheapest mode of transport, but we should be willing to re-think transportation. What is so wrong with mass-transportation? Why can’t we create condensed urban centers where we can work, play, eat, and sleep within a 15-minute bike ride? Why should we spend 20,000-40,000 miles and countless hours driving when we can spend infinitely less time and energy propelling ourselves to our destinations? The benefits of a planned society are numerous, and we should be willing to dream.

But for those of you who have money to burn and no time to dream, you should buy the BMW Z4, or maybe go nuts and get a Motor Sport Elise, a Porsche Boxster, a Saleen S7, or a Lamborghini Diablo. After all, it will build your own kids character if they have to pay their own way to college.

So…. does anyone know where to find a good cost of ownership info source, pref. internet, for older cars. It is the only part of this purchase I’m wary of.

I agree biking is not possible for all, but living closer to work is often not even considered. For those who live close enough to work to bike, most consider it to be far more difficult (or impossible) or dangerous than it really is, if they consider it at all. Something like 80% of all car trips are less than 2 miles. In some cases we still save time by driving, but the necessity of such time-slicing is brought on by our tendency to overcommit ourselves and our kids.

I own cars but bike to work as often as possible. “Car Free” is possible for some but not many. I live in a midwestern suburb, and I enjoy cars as well as bikes.

As for “Get Rich Slowly,” I think I get it. First off, “get rich quick” schemes are risky, at best. Secondly, you can get wealthy with patience, frugality, and by “slowing down” and getting out of the consumerist rat-race.

[...] drive from downtown Portland to our house takes about 20 minutes. If we use my estimated costs for the Ford Focus I recently sold, it comes to 36.1 cents per mile, or about $3.60 per [...]

2) The AAA number does not include the total cost of the car. It is only the interest that you are paying on the downpayment. So actually your cost is much lower than the EPA your cost should then be ~$.16/mile. Much cheaper than the AAA value!

This number of is very misleading…

Most of

* Fuel: $1,646.37 ($0.0812 per mile)
* Insurance: $762.93 ($0.0376 per mile)
* Service: $507.07 ($0.0250 per mile)

[...] isn’t really your actual cost for the trip, of course. I know from past research, for example, that my car currently costs me about 26 cents per mile to run. The site’s [...]

http://www.aaaexchange.com/Main/Default.asp?CategoryID=16&SubCategoryID=76&ContentID=353

My Ford Focus gets roughly 310 miles on eleven gallons of fuel, for an average of 28.2 mpg. If fuel is at $3.00/gallon instead of $2.00/gallon, I’m paying 10.3% more — $725/year — to run my car.
* Fuel: $1,646.37 ($0.0812 per mile)
* Insurance: $762.93 ($0.0376 per mile)
* Service: $507.07 ($0.0250 per mile)

If your fuel cost is 1,646.37 10% more is an additional 164.63 you say $725?

If your currently paying $2.00 and the price goes 3.00 per gallon. That would be a 50% increase in fuel cost per year or $823

The most cost effective cars (at the gas prices in effect when I owned them) were the perennial bad-boys, rear-wheel drive V8 American cars, purchased with about 50-60k miles. Parts are cheap when needed, value doesn’t change significantly from purchase to sale, and frankly I enjoyed them much more than econo-boxes. Now that gas has goine up, they are not likely to still be lowest, but likewise their purchase prices have plummeted.

The absolute worst cars? VW and BMW. Mediocre gas mileage, sky-high parts prices, and extremely poor reliability.

Ive never done the math on the cost of car ownership but my ex-GF (whom Im still good friends with) found out the hard way how costs go up sharply once you move from a budget car to a luxury brand. After going from an econocar to a BMW 3-Series her maintenance, insurance, and fuel cost increased exponentially but because she loves it so much she refuses to get rid of it.

I’m very very fortunate in having a work car that I get to drive for personal use. No fuel, insurance, or maintanence costs and I even get free car washes! I cant even imagine how much money this saves me a year but I certainly appreciate it. Once I got the work car I sold my Mazda and I havent owned a car for the past 3 years.

What am I missing?

Oh yea, this blog is about getting rich slowly? WTH?

The author is missing one important thing in his/her economic analysis: the psychological cost of NOT owning a car. If people keep buying new, expensive cars even though it’s expensive, it means that they value the opportunity to drive such cars more than the money they have to spend (or waste, depending on your point of view). Also, think about the point of this website. Get rich slowly? What for? What’s the point of having a million dollars when I am 75? I completely sympathize with John Wagnitz. I believe that driving less and walking or biking more is a great idea, but unfortunately, that’s not what most people think (especially if you’re in Texas).

Although I have not done the calculations myself, I do keep the cost/mile in mind when using the car. If it’s probably cheaper by transit, I take the bus/subway. If it’s more convenient or significantly faster than transit, I drive.

[...] http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/05/31/the-true-cost-of-car-ownership/ [...]

[...] If not, don’t. On a ten-gallon fill-up, saving five cents a gallon only nets you fifty cents. My car costs about 36 cents per mile to operate. It doesn’t make sense for me to go a mile out of my way to find cheaper [...]