Originally Posted by
dcrowell
Some on this forum still own a car, but use it responsibly. They need a car often enough to justify having it. I decided I no longer needed a car.
I rented a car for three days. My total bill including fuel will be less than one payment on my old vehicle, and maybe only 40% more of one month's insurance. I'll only need to rent a car a few times a year, so this is a huge cost savings over owning my own car, even an old paid-for beater.
Renting a car could be a good alternative to owning so I did the math on my current situation to see how much of an Albatross my 1993 Buick Century is. The car was purchased 30 1/2 months ago for $508.65 including license and tax. Insurance to date has been $2,102.00 with annual license tags at $222.00. Oil changes, muffler and tail pipe replacement and the required E-test came to $1009.95. In this time period because I only use the car to pick-up groceries, visit my bicycle dealer in Toronto and bring clean laundry into work I have only accumulated 14,174 kilometers, (88,007.31 miles). Gasoline for this period should be very close $1,525.00 giving me a grand total of $5,367.60. That works out to $175.99 per month or less than 38 cents per kilometer. I do not know how much car rentals are but my guess is that it would be more then what I have spent so far for the same amount of time. I have seen other safe cars available for similar purchase price and at this point if anything major breaks the Buick is retired. Sometimes the car sits so long the battery goes flat but I have a charger to bring it back to life. If you have a place to park a car, saving something from the crusher may work out cheaper then renting or taxi.