I was just thinking that we've done a million miles and change of driving over the past thirty years.
I then thought about just how much this has cost us.
We've never had much in the way of repair cost with any of our vehicles, since I do most of the work myself and not much has actually broken in our daily drivers over that time, so this isn't much of a factor.
Given that for the first half of that period, we were driving far less expensive cars and were also paying far less in nominal dollars for fuel, I'm going to estimate that we've spent the better part of $180K on personal transportation.
There is an obvious convenience factor in having a car outside of a very dense urban area and like most people I can't see how either my wife or I would get to work without driving.
Still, ~$180K would have paid for lots of cab rides and weekend car rentals and even though this represents a fairly small fraction of our discretionary income over that time, it's still a sobering total.
Do the math yourself and even if you drive beaters, which do feature higher repair costs, I think you'll be surprised at just how much you spend on driving.
I then thought about just how much this has cost us.
We've never had much in the way of repair cost with any of our vehicles, since I do most of the work myself and not much has actually broken in our daily drivers over that time, so this isn't much of a factor.
Given that for the first half of that period, we were driving far less expensive cars and were also paying far less in nominal dollars for fuel, I'm going to estimate that we've spent the better part of $180K on personal transportation.
There is an obvious convenience factor in having a car outside of a very dense urban area and like most people I can't see how either my wife or I would get to work without driving.
Still, ~$180K would have paid for lots of cab rides and weekend car rentals and even though this represents a fairly small fraction of our discretionary income over that time, it's still a sobering total.
Do the math yourself and even if you drive beaters, which do feature higher repair costs, I think you'll be surprised at just how much you spend on driving.