cerewa

The thread linked below looks at the dollar value of not using a car: (it asks, essentially, "how much would they have to bribe you to get you to drive to work every day instead of biking?")

https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car-free/504482-put-your-money-where-your-mouth-what-s-dollar-value-carfree-carlite.html

My question is, when you do not consider the things you don't like about cars (cost, lack of exercise, etc) what is the money value of the benefits a car* can provide? I am mainly thinking of a car but you may answer for an SUV/pickup/minivan if you prefer.

The downsides of cars are plentiful (pollution, danger, $$ for insurance/purchase/repair/fuel, less exercise, land use, $$ for road construction&maintenance ) and well-discussed on this forum. The up-sides are also sometimes discussed but the financial up-sides are what I'm particularly interested in focusing on for this thread. Feel free to argue that, even ignoring everything you don't like about cars, the money value of the benefits of having a car is small or negligible.

*one you own or get to use every day

Roody

For me the money value of a car is slim to none. I wouldn't have a better job or work longer hours if I had a car, I wouldn't be able to buy cheaper stuff at stores. There are a couple leisure activities I could do better with a car, but that doesn't have any money value.

Maybe somebody will think of something that applies to me, but offhand I can't think of any money value for me.

zeppinger

There is a good book I just finished that has a work sheet you can fill out that will tell you exactly what your car cost you. The book is called "Living well without owning a car." Unfortunately I am moving to Korea in a few weeks and the book has been pack so I can not include its contents. However, I can contribute that the biggest cost associated with the average car owner is actually depreciation, which most people neglect to consider when buying a car. Also, cars that do not depreciate much, such as older models over 100k, have much higher repair and maintenance cost which tends to overshadow some of the savings.

cerewa

Here are reasons why a person like me might consider a car to have useful value in money terms:

One job I was asked to apply for was at least 70 minutes away from home by car. From my perspective, this was not a reasonable job to consider without a car. I got another job, probably just as good, a month or two later. Lost income due to not driving to that job? $2000 or so.

For one job, I traveled 34 miles round trip (in a hilly area) each day, sometimes by bike and sometimes by car. If I assumed that the value of time-not-working-or-traveling to me was $12 per hour, which is what my pay rate was at the time, that means that driving a car was providing me with $12-$18 of time-savings benefit per day, or several thousand dollars per year. (Driving was also costing a lot... but biking was leaving me exhausted all evening 5 days a week which was arguably worth hundreds of dollars per week... but then if I had been slowing down and drinking more water I would not have been exhausted every evening)

Assuming you are able to choose a greater variety of jobs and gain work experience faster when you have a car (doesn't seem to be true for me personally, right now) the benefits of having a car could seem much bigger.

dwilbur3

No job pays enough to get me to drive 70 miles each way. They say time is money, I'd rather have the time.

zeppinger

+1 Other peoples time maybe money but my time IS MY LIFE!

Foofy

+1

One financial benefit of owning a car (pardon if this has been said already) is that if you take good car of the vehicle, you can sell it for money if you're ever in a financial. Of course, how much of a benefit that is depends on a number of factors. Cars in general tend to be terrible financial "investments", because of the depreciation and inevitable decay of the car from being used.

Roody

I think there's a flaw in the logic here. You're talking about what economists call "opportunity costs" here. By bike commuting you were losing the opportunity to earn more money at the rate of $12 and hour. You weren't actually losing even one penny.

And this works both ways. I need to exercise 60 to 90 minutes a day. By combining that time with my commute time (30 minutes a day) and errand running time, I'm actually being more efficient and saving time. This provides me with the opportunity to work more hours when I want to.

Nightshade

There is no upside to owning a car if you have public transportation available 24/7. If not then
one must find a way to transport those goods needs to run a houshold.

A car is a total loss for the money end of it.

zeppinger

In the book that I mentioned earlier the author starts the first chapter with "the decision to own a car is the worst financial moves that most people will make throughout their live, and they will do it again and again." Any thoughts?

wahoonc

IF there is a market for said vehicle (think of the value crash in trucks and SUV's during the last gas price run up), and most cases it will be at a loss, as well as money lost while waiting for the car to sell. Forum member political geek, just went through this. He wasn't in any hurry to sell, but even listing it below book value it didn't seem to be moving. IIRC he ended up selling it to CarMax just to get it out of his life.

Aaron

gescom

Here's my sob story.. Having a car will get you a job, while not having one will put you on the bottom of the pile of candidates, everytime. That's the awful truth, at least in my case. (Don't take this as some absolute truth, its just my subjective experience, opinion.)

Maybe I don't have the degree of skills, education or work ethic that many in this forum have so my unemployment is not all to do with being carless, however I find how easily you are overlooked by potential employers quite disheartening and unfair. Probably most of you would have similar stories, experiences.

In my case going without a car has made me very poor (money wise, cycling has been great!) and narrowed down my choices alot. I like to stand for what I believe in and will continue to do so, its just that personally i'm on a sinking ship... (help!)

wahoonc

Everytime I was asked if I had a car the answer was yes...but I didn't point out it was an MG and was in pieces in my parents garage. I cycled to that job for over 5 years before I moved on. Hopefully we will see some changes in societal attitudes, but they will be slow in coming. The company I work for requires dependable transportation, we don't car what you use, however most of our work is out of town so a car is quite often required.

Aaron

pacificaslim

Do you have some sort of rare medical condition that requires that much exercise? If I had such a condition, I'd get a job that is itself exercise and then drive or take public transportation to work and have more free time in my life.

This thread is doomed to being nothing more than people rationalizing their own choices. Here's mine. I lived car free from about '86 to '98, which included university and then a regular adult life - but in Tokyo. It made total sense to not have a car in Tokyo since there were much faster and more convenient transportation options (usually a combination of bike/walk/train). When I moved to the San Francisco area in '98, I quickly realized that owning a car was going to be the smart choice and that without one, my world would be very small. So I now rely on a 40 year old Italian convertible to get me around to places I can't get to by train or on bike/foot (yes, you can get nearly anywhere on bike or foot but not in the amount of hours I have in a day...).

Roody

I think you're totally right that not having a car will put you at the bottom of the heap. I think this is especially true when it comes to entry level jobs. At a job interview, a candidate for an executive or professional position probably isn't even asked if he/she has a car. For somebody applying to flip burgers, it's often the first question that's asked.

We know that "Do you have a car?" and "Do you have reliable transportation?" are two very different questions. Unfortunately, most human resource officers and assistant managers at McDonalds don't know this.

In the long run, we can try to educate the public so that most people (including McDonald's managers) understand that bikes are good transportation. In the meantime, your best bet might be to get more education, training, or experience so that you can apply for positions where car ownership isn't required.

Roody

Yes, I have a medical condition that requires exercise. No, it's not a rare condition. In fact, it's almost universal.

Thanks for the career advice, even if I didn't ask for it. However, I think I'll pass on your suggestion to get a "physical" job. I'm not much interested in digging ditches or working on a moving van; I'd rather be riding my bike.

wahoonc

A very large portion of the US public has a not so rare "medical condition"...that could be easily overcome by cycling (or other forms of exercise).

Unfortunately the number of physical jobs that pay living wages are few and far between...so we do the best we can with what we have, and that includes making time for exercise.

Aaron

pacificaslim

You don't have to get all tweaked about it. I didn't give you any advice. I simply stated what I would do if I really needed 90 min of exercise a day. But unless one has a job that involves lying down and stuffing one's face with food, they don't need any more than 30 min of mild exercise a day. Sure, you like to ride your bike, but just say so. Instead, you're trying to say that you'd save no time in your life by having a car because you'd have to go exercise for 90 min anyway. You won't convince anyone to take up bike commuting with that kind of argument.

zeppinger

The San Francisco Bay area has some of the best mass transit that this country has to offer... Where do you need to be so fast? How often do you exercise and when you do, do you drive to a gym? Did they have teleporters in Japan? We cyclists like to use our time wisely just like anyone else. However, I dont like to be smug about it as if my time is worth more than other peoples or be unwilling to spend an extra few minutes in transit everyday in order to reduce my carbon foot print. I dont think owning a car in the Bay area makes any sense.

zeppinger

Humans are designed to be exercising almost constantly. Walking is one of the best exercises the human body can do because we have evolved as such. In-fact one of the prime motivators for our bipedalism is the ability to cover grate distances for foraging, hunting, and to live a generally nomadic life. I do not see how 30 mins of exercise a day comes even close to what we are really designed to do, such as chasing our food down and beating it to death with a stick I know that when I get on my bike I wont even break a sweat in 30 mins. 90 mins is not an unrealistic amount of exercise, it may however, be a too much to comprehend for the average cubicle working, tv sloth. For those people, some physicians will set the bar nice and low with 30 mins a day, and they will still not do it...

127.0.0.1

a human being is designed for long distance, multi-hour pursuit of food.

we can trump nearly any other animal in sheer endurance, wearing them down, and then
wham we can easily kill exhausted prey


so....yeah. we have the cooling system, and tool making ability, and smarts other animals
don't have. bipedal gait is the most efficient and energy saving way to move through the jungle
and for that factor, plus sweating and no fur, we can chase down anything until it drops
from exhaustion. so......sedentary is not really what our bodies are about

Roody

My round trip commute (8 miles) is about 30 minutes by bike. It'd be about 15 minutes by car. But I'd have to add 15 minutes to my exercise time if I drove to work. Therefore, since I'm killing two birds with one stone, I'm not spending any more time if I ride instead of drive to work.

BTW, your medical advice about 30 minutes of exercise a day is no more helpful than your career advice that I get a job digging ditches. My doctor tells me that my heart and waistline need more than an hour of exercise a day. With today's busy lifestyles, the best way for many people to get that much saddle time is to combine exercise with other activities that they have to do anyway.

You also said something about driving to create more free time. Believe me though, I never feel freer than when I'm riding my bike.

Another factor is that most Americans spend about 20 per cent of their income on their cars. In other words, they work one day a week to pay for the car. I decided long ago to do without a car, and to work only 4 days a week. So this is another way that cycling instead of driving gives me more free time, not less.

And guess what I usually do on my extra day off!

patc

I would love to see a survey on this (real survey, not a forum poll!). I'm 37, and I have NEVER been asked at any job if I had "transportation" etc. I was asked about punctuality a few times, but never once in my life was I asked how I got to work. I've never actually asked friends about their experiences, so I don't know if I am the anomaly, or if that just isn't done around here. Odd.

Canada vs. US? Large city? High transit model split? Or maybe its just because I tend to interview the interviewer?

I've had a strange work history, maybe I'm just weird.

Roody

I think the factor is the type of job you apply for. The lower the pay, the more likely that they'll ask you about your car. A friend tells me (and I've observed) that if you even ask for a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, they'll often ask you about your transportation before they even hand you the job app.

It's easy to train people for these jobs, so the main thing they want is that employees show up for work reliably. The managers that make the hiring decisions are just reflecting the prevailing opinion that cars are more reliable than bikes.

wahoonc

yup..you're weird

I suspect it is the type of job, the locale (US vs Canada) and possibly the person's job history.

Also too many employers(and people who work for them) are unable to see beyond their narrow way of doing things. The company I work for requires me to have a truck, they reimburse me for the use of the truck. When I work out of town I take a bike with me, it is not unusual for the truck to sit until it is time for me to drive back home, in some cases as long as a month. It completely freaks them out that I do it, but as long as I get my job done they really don't have room to complain. In another case I was taking Amtrak back and forth between the jobsite and my home, much easier on me and saved them and me money. Again they didn't get it, but loved the savings involved.

Aaron