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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

Have you calculated how much you're actually spending per day?

I roughly calculated my expenses once.

$32k car $8k tax/license + loan interest up to point I paid it off = $50k $200 gas a month for 6 years = $14400 $4k renew service plan $1200 a year car ins $7200 2 sets of tires at $1k each = $2k

100k miles on it at 6 years

So $50k+14.4k+4k+7.2k+2k = $77.6k / 100k miles = 0.77 cents per mile.

My commute was 40miles each way or $61 PER DAY!!! That's a TON more than public transportation. That price will slowly go down the longer I keep the car but still, $61 per day is a lot of money. At 20days month that's $1220 a month. That's far more than 2 people's monthly transportation passes.

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Living in Seattle or the Bay Area, most people "have to" have a car, so I see it as a sunk cost, rather than amortized. I'm impressed with the political will that it must have taken to plan a line from Everett to Tacoma. With that kind of community planning, the Puget Sound may be more like NYC than the Bay Area in 25 years. The duplicitous rail options interoperating within the Bay Area fiefdoms- Muni, VTA, Caltrain, BART... are ridiculous. Seattle can't do anything to improve their weather, but for those who don't mind being damp, I think it's an easy choice over the Bay Area, and they are proving that they can think long term.

Not that anyone is going to be convinced of anything here, but...

Car: $11,600

http://bellingham.craigslist.org/cto/5494584275.html

Taxes/tags: $1,500

Gas: $150/mo (100,000 miles @ 25mi/gal @ $2.50 gal over 6 years) = $10,000

Maintenance: $250/year * 6 years = $1,500

Insurance: $600/year * 6 years = $3,600

2 sets of 65k mile tires: 2*600 = $1,200

sell the car @140k miles: -$2,000

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/5488481558.html

Total: $27,400 or $0.274/mi

What about the inevitable repairs on a used car? I find that I spend another 1000/yr on things that break in my car because it is off-warranty. Also, gas prices are more like 2.80 to 3.50 here in Seattle, historically.

I spend at least $2000/year on things that break in my car (and I've never owned a car new enough to know what is or isn't covered by a warranty), because it's a Range Rover and replacement parts cost more than you think they should. That's still far less than I'd be spending on monthly payments if I had a newer car, and insurance is cheap since I don't have a loan company requiring me to sign up for the expensive comp/collision package, so I feel like I'm coming out way ahead.

That's a salvage title, not something most people are comfortable with.

You certainly can find a car for that or much less, but not a 2012 Camry.

Thanks for doing this. Most people have no idea how much their car costs them, and usually just think of the gas price.

The total cost of ownership only matters if you are deciding whether to own a car at all, and that is really less a question of cost than your willingness to change your lifestyle around a commitment to non-car-ownership and stop doing the things which are only feasible when you have a car.

For decisions about any individual trip, gas price really is most of the issue, because you're already committed to paying for the option of driving whether or not you choose to exercise it in any particular instance.

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