Jen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jenniferkobernik) wrote2022-01-04 09:56 pm
jenniferkobernik) wrote2022-01-04 09:56 pm
Resilience Club: Reduce Your Transportation Costs
Next to housing, transportation is the biggest expense for most Americans, and I imagine the same holds true in many countries. Beyond the purchase price, personal automobiles cost money in debt servicing if they are financed, fuel, insurance, inspections and registration, maintenance and repair, depreciation, and even expenses associated with poor health due to lack of physical activity, poor air quality, exposure to toxic chemicals, and injuries from car wrecks.
Ideally, get rid of your car (or at least one of them, if there is more than one person in your household who owns a vehicle). Consider walking, biking (possibly with a small cargo trailer and/or electric assist), public transportation such as bus or train, carpooling, borrowing a car or requesting a ride from a friend occasionally, the use of ride sharing services or even the occasional taxi, or moving to a location within walking/biking distance of your work, grocery store, or other important locations. If you are able-bodied, rather than paying for a car which you drive to a gym (!), ditch the car payment and gym membership and walk (or run, or bike, or rollerblade for that matter) to the grocery store and back with a backpack a couple times a week. You will probably stay able-bodied longer that way (unless you get hit by someone driving a car!).
If you must have a car, never buy it new, and never finance it. Buy a make and model known for its longevity, and don’t upgrade until absolutely necessary. Also consider gas mileage when buying, but don’t be suckered into paying too much for shoddy models because they promise marginally better mileage.
The more you know about cars, how to discern their true condition, and how to fix them, the cheaper you can buy them used without disaster ensuing. If, like me, you cannot remember what a carburetor is or does, despite it having been explained to you half a dozen times, try to find a friend or relative who understands cars to shop with/for you. But if they really like fiddling with cars and assume that everyone else must too, make sure they don’t tell you to buy something that needs more work than you can give it—if they say things like “just replace the head gasket and it will be good to go,” ask questions like this to help calibrate their expectations: “Which of those little dots on the floppy metal thing is the oil supposed to be at when you check it?” or “Are the spark plugs under the hood or are they under the car somewhere?” or “What does a clutch actually do, really?”
If you have already subjected yourself to a car payment, get out from under it however you can—sell the car and save up cash for a used vehicle, for instance. At the very least, pay it off as soon as possible, and don’t do it again. (Of course, if you have unsecured consumer debt such as credit cards, pay that off first). If your car is nice enough and you drive a lot, you may be able to make money by having it wrapped in advertising and apply that toward your car payment—yes, this is horrifying and tacky, but it’s suitable punishment for having financed a car!
Drop comprehensive coverage on your car (once it’s paid off), and carry only liability insurance. Compare rates and see if your insurance company offers premium reductions for safe driving records, low mileage, or other behaviors.
Learn to do your own maintenance, do it regularly, and record it. If you must have work done at a shop and don’t know much about cars, take someone knowledgeable (preferably a working-class male, maybe the same one who helped you buy your used car) with you. This will usually reduce attempts to overcharge you or perform unnecessary repairs, or at least make them less blatant and more likely to get caught.
Drive only when necessary, drive at a reasonable speed, and don’t dissipate the energy in all that petroleum as waste heat from braking because you won’t stop tailgating.
Really, though, try to get rid of your car altogether. If you can’t or won’t do this, the money you can save through tips and tricks will be less by an order of magnitude than if you simply ditched the car (or turned your vehicle into your house, as mentioned in the last post in this series).
See you February 4th!
Ideally, get rid of your car (or at least one of them, if there is more than one person in your household who owns a vehicle). Consider walking, biking (possibly with a small cargo trailer and/or electric assist), public transportation such as bus or train, carpooling, borrowing a car or requesting a ride from a friend occasionally, the use of ride sharing services or even the occasional taxi, or moving to a location within walking/biking distance of your work, grocery store, or other important locations. If you are able-bodied, rather than paying for a car which you drive to a gym (!), ditch the car payment and gym membership and walk (or run, or bike, or rollerblade for that matter) to the grocery store and back with a backpack a couple times a week. You will probably stay able-bodied longer that way (unless you get hit by someone driving a car!).
If you must have a car, never buy it new, and never finance it. Buy a make and model known for its longevity, and don’t upgrade until absolutely necessary. Also consider gas mileage when buying, but don’t be suckered into paying too much for shoddy models because they promise marginally better mileage.
The more you know about cars, how to discern their true condition, and how to fix them, the cheaper you can buy them used without disaster ensuing. If, like me, you cannot remember what a carburetor is or does, despite it having been explained to you half a dozen times, try to find a friend or relative who understands cars to shop with/for you. But if they really like fiddling with cars and assume that everyone else must too, make sure they don’t tell you to buy something that needs more work than you can give it—if they say things like “just replace the head gasket and it will be good to go,” ask questions like this to help calibrate their expectations: “Which of those little dots on the floppy metal thing is the oil supposed to be at when you check it?” or “Are the spark plugs under the hood or are they under the car somewhere?” or “What does a clutch actually do, really?”
If you have already subjected yourself to a car payment, get out from under it however you can—sell the car and save up cash for a used vehicle, for instance. At the very least, pay it off as soon as possible, and don’t do it again. (Of course, if you have unsecured consumer debt such as credit cards, pay that off first). If your car is nice enough and you drive a lot, you may be able to make money by having it wrapped in advertising and apply that toward your car payment—yes, this is horrifying and tacky, but it’s suitable punishment for having financed a car!
Drop comprehensive coverage on your car (once it’s paid off), and carry only liability insurance. Compare rates and see if your insurance company offers premium reductions for safe driving records, low mileage, or other behaviors.
Learn to do your own maintenance, do it regularly, and record it. If you must have work done at a shop and don’t know much about cars, take someone knowledgeable (preferably a working-class male, maybe the same one who helped you buy your used car) with you. This will usually reduce attempts to overcharge you or perform unnecessary repairs, or at least make them less blatant and more likely to get caught.
Drive only when necessary, drive at a reasonable speed, and don’t dissipate the energy in all that petroleum as waste heat from braking because you won’t stop tailgating.
Really, though, try to get rid of your car altogether. If you can’t or won’t do this, the money you can save through tips and tricks will be less by an order of magnitude than if you simply ditched the car (or turned your vehicle into your house, as mentioned in the last post in this series).
See you February 4th!
no subject
The available day care and school have required a car. Not doable on public transport in less than 3-4 hours a day and no busses. Also, we are DIYers and have small livestock (and a small truck), not possible to haul feed and building materials on the bus or by bike. Sharing would probably be the best option for us but even then the hurdles have been too big so far- no willing people to do it informally and formal car share is a bus ride and a half away.
I have kind of resigned myself to admitting transportation is not a fight I can win in this battle and to put my energies elsewhere and wait until we can't do this anymore. We still try to downshift here where possible and use less, but we do lose at this one. That being said, we buy used and drive them until they catch on fire (literally!). Duct tape is the mother of sustainability sometimes!
I am grateful to people who keep pushing the infrastructure into ways that work without cars and hope to get there someday!
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I have done some back of the envelope calculations and I guess that we could probably use a taxi or even rent a car or truck a couple or three times a month - for those times when we need to go someplace too far, or carry more than will fit in a backpack - and still spend less than we do just to have the van sit in the carport.
There is also the idea of car sharing, which may be easier said than done. I know a guy who has a truck that he doesn't use much, and I could ask to borrow it once in a while (pay him for it, even). Or if you have a car, you could consider lending it out, or driving friends and relatives around in your spare time.
Just for some additional perspective, cars really are expensive. We have a small, utilitarian van that we paid cash for. It's about as cheap a car as you can get. Even so, it is the second largest item in our household budget, after the house itself. Most of the houses around here have _at least_ one car per adult family member, some of them rather large and expensive. It is pretty easy to estimate the monthly/annual cost of all those cars sitting in the driveway. Most of those folks could easily afford another house if they gave up their cars.
As a final note, Henry David Thoreau wrote a chapter in Walden about the price of train tickets (in New England in the 1850s). He asserted that if one man set out walking to Concord, and a second man set about working to earn money for his train fare and then took the train, the man who walked would get there sooner. He goes on to propose that a man could travel the world round on foot, and do it more quickly than a man traveling by trains and steamships could if he had to work to earn his fares. A similar calculation still produces the same results today: if you divide the distance traveled by a car (subtracting distance traveled solely for the purpose of maintaining the car, such as driving it to the shop for maintenance), and divide it by the total time that is spent on the car (waiting at stoplights, filling the gas tank, maintenance, time spent driving it to the garage for maintenance, time spent at a job earning money to pay for it, time spent driving to the job to earn money for it, etc.) then most cars don't move any faster than a person can walk.
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I also think that direct person-to-person (rather than ride share apps or whatever) car sharing and such will become/is becoming easier socially in many communities—the idea isn’t so unthinkable any more, and cars are becoming less of a status thing to a lot of people. I know many an old person who doesn’t drive their car very much but could use some extra money or a few errands run in exchange for borrowing it.
We also paid cash for an old vehicle, and it is also still more or less the most expensive item in our budget.