> If you buy a car, you're going to spend more than that for the next few years, but if it was a fairly inexpensive used car, you might pay ~$250/month for 3 years and come out ahead in 8-10 years.

Do those numbers include maintenance and insurance? IME just routine maintenance on an oldish (60-100k) Toyota runs into the hundreds of dollars. Insurance again something like ~$800-1000.

I got rid of my car after I did the math and realized I was spending $1500-2000 a year on just insurance and maintenance.