Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

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Isn't the reason the rent is higher because you can forego a car? For example, the average monthly car payment for a used car is supposedly $526[0] and insurance $168[1]. So if you get rid of that, you can afford nearly $700 more per month in rent (assuming you can still qualify by having household monthly gross income of 3x the rent).

So, in your case, you only really need to make more to afford a walkable lifecycle if you still want to own a car and have the option to use it to drive to places outside of your walking distance. Of course, completely moving to a lifestyle where all travel is public trasit and airport-based is tough to achieve, but it could be a worthwhile price to pay depending on how often you travel and where (since the time investment is also high for cars in the U.S. with how far apart each city is from the next).

0: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/average-monthly-ca...

1: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-i...

If you are rich the payment might be $500. The poor are buying used cars for $5000 and keeping it for a few years, so lets knock that down to $250/month (including maintenance). Their insurance is cheaper as well (if they even bother with it...). You can get your monthly costs even lower if you know how to buy a reliable car that you maintain yourself (or for free by friends/family) - which the poor are likely to do.

I went without a car for a year a few years ago (personal challenge / to save some money), and had a spreadsheet detailing the cost of ownership for a $10k car. Costs:

* Insurance: $640

* Registration: $51

* Repairs: $200

* Depreciation: $300

* Opportunity cost (assuming a 6% ROI on the $10k): $600

All in cost (excluding gas): $1790

At the time, I was comparing the cost of owning a car vs using car2go, uber, etc for a few trips a month. In the end, it basically just showed that owning a car wasn't all that expensive, and the convenience was WELL worth it.

My current car is worth ~$5k, and these numbers are actually a fairly good representation of my costs over the past few years. I take it in once a year to get the oil changed, and do other small repairs, but otherwise it just kinda.. works. Parking and other costs from living in a city might swing this calculus a bit more, but at the end of the day, you don't need a brand new car, and a modest 10 year old car can drive well, without costing you very much.

Until you're poor you don't realize how cheaply you can keep a vehicle running, nor how many people are just driving around without insurance, license, and various other "necessities".

Isn't it illegal to drive without auto insurance? (At least, in California?)

This is the secret underbelly to the car-centric design of the US. People drive illegally all the time. They drive over legal BAC limits, they drive without insurance, they drive unlicensed, they don't pay parking tickets, they drive looking down at their phones and not at the road.

When you're poor and you live in an area completely unserved by public transit and you lose your license because you can't afford to pay parking tickets, are you really going to stop driving and lose your job and become homeless?

We have statistics to show what unlicensed and uninsured driver crash and fatality rates are like and they're a lot higher than the rest of the cohort, but there's still a sizable part of the US population that does all of these things and still uses the same public road infrastructure as everyone else, often out of lack of alternatives.

Sure.

And to get your car registered in most states, you usually only have to pass an emissions test, have a valid license, and have proof of insurance at the time that you register the car.

This means that 11 out of 12 months, you get to drive around without insurance.

I don’t even think having a valid license is a reasonable requirement. I should be able to own and register a car without having a license.

I think you can do this in most states; I know you can in my state (MA).

It's actually possible to own a vehicle without registration at all, though they will side-eye you sometimes.

The most common is "farm implement operated incidentally over a highway".

Laughs in Michigan.

Yes it is illegal.

Pretty much illegal everywhere in the US except for a few weird outliers. I think there’s one southern state that lets you have a bond instead of insurance?

I was curious so I looked it up, and it seems that 32 states allow surety bonds: https://www.autoinsuresavings.org/surety-bonds-auto-insuranc...

New Hampshire is the only state that doesn't require insurance or a bond IIRC

It is illegal in many states. But they average something like 10-30% of all drivers: https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/resources/uninsured...

If you never get pulled over, or you know some tricks, you slide by.

  lets knock that down to $250/month

Let's not. Average car payments and loan duration continue to rise. NerdWallet is putting the average new car loan at $700/mo for 70 months and the average used car loan at $525 for 68 months. About half of all Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency, so it's pretty damn unlikely they'll be paying for even a $5,000 car without a loan. If you're poor not only are you taking out a loan you're getting socked with a high interest rate subprime loan that's going to cost you more than a loan to a wealthier person.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...

Seems like an obvious case of selection bias. Used car loans are going to be a lot higher than average prices people actually pay for cars, because people who take out loans to buy cars are buying more expensive cars than people who don't.

About half of all Americans can't cover a $1,000 emergency.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/data-2023-savings...

(Used) car prices continue to climb.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/15/new-use...

Subprime auto loans continue to be fairly popular, Investopedia is claiming about 40% of used car loans are subprime.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subprime_auto_loans.asp https://www.consumerreports.org/car-financing/many-americans...

So, no, rich people aren't driving these ballooning loans they're going to the working poor. The excruciatingly poor don't own cars. Defaults were ticking up leading into the pandemic, people are simply living beyond their means at this point. Cars are expensive and have been getting more and more expensive.

Also, the average is always going to be higher than the median. These things tend to follow a lognormal distribution.

In theory, yes, and a lot of lower income people do put that into practice and live in my same apartment complex. These people also usually own cars. The nearest grocery store is about a mile away, and the nearly bus stop is about the same distance. I occassionally bike to the store and have a bike trailer for groceries, but I have felt like I'm risking my life when carefully biking a trailer-full of groceries across the six lane 'street'.

Apart from Uber or hitching a ride from a friend, there's no good transportation option to our airport but I get your point. I think in most cases, given the option between a walkable (to work and restaurants) neighborhood and no car (and no good public transit), and suburbia with a car, most people would choose suburbia. Ease of getting groceries, ease of access to recreation, etc. What's really missing is the transit investment.

This still sounds not great :(

My car was $1,500 and my insurance is ~$35. I'm lucky enough to be able to bother mechanics to teach me repairs though.

If you hit and seriously injure someone, that $35 insurance will not cover the multi-million dollar medical and legal and recompense bills.

This can be a working strategy if you don't have a dollar to your name (whomever you hit won't be able to squeeze blood out of a stone), and never intend to have a dollar to your name, but is generally ill-advised for someone in the middle-class, who has money and assets to lose.

No lawyer is even going to bother to sue a judgment proof person like that. They're going to be happy to settle for whatever insurance offers.

Just about no auto insurance in the US will cover multi-million dollar bills - I know my insurance company maxes out at a $500k limit.

I also have the cheapest limited liability insurance money will buy. It's a cost-benefit gamble I'm willing to take.

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