Originally Posted by
mikeybikes
Is that necessary? Seems the cost of maintaining an extra car and the added insurance cost would exceed the cost of a rental, should you need it.
I suppose it is a different way of looking at things. My wife and I have one car, a 2003 Subaru that we paid cash for. It hasn't broken down yet, but in the rare event that it did, we could go about our normal lives using public transit and / or bicycles. I would hate to be that reliant on a car that it'd be cheaper to own two cars in case one broke down.
Getting a rental is a pain in the ass that we don't like dealing with. Since we both own our cars outright and our agreed to plan of action on them is to run them until they are too expensive to fix, why not keep both? Her car just sits until I take it out to circulate the fluids and such, so one weekend a month of going to Ralph's or Target isn't going to cause me any additional maintenance on it. Maybe a tank of gas, no oil change, and some fuel treatment by STP and it is fine. My car insurance won't change if I have 1 or 2 cars, but if the mileage changes, my rates will change.
Now, if I were making payments on mine, I'd be seriously consider selling it. But since I don't, it doesn't cost me too much to have one of our cars sitting there.
Public transit is horrible here, even though it was an award winner in the past. 2 hours by bus to get to my office is far to long to travel less than 10 miles.