Originally Posted by
duckbill
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.
I rented the car for three days at a total cost of about $160 including all insurance. I paid about $45 in gasoline. So, let's call it $200 total.
I'll need to do this maybe twice a year, but sometimes it could be more than three days. Let's be generous and say $700 per year. That's still a bargain and equivalent to two months car-payment on my truck that I sold in November.