uke

It's intellectually dishonest to count depreciation, opportunity costs, or any other pieces of fuzzy math when making these comparisons. When you buy a car (or anything), all the money you spent is gone. That's it. The end. If you make some back by selling it, count that money when it reaches your bank account. Trying to double-count such factors to make purchases seem better or worse just makes car-free advocates look like they don't understand math.

hnsq

What price can you put on being able to drive home to visit your family 300 miles away? Or being able to take your girlfriend to the shore 250 miles away? I ride my bike for transportation as much as I can, but being completely car-free limits yourself way too much. Cars are more expensive, but they provide a service that bikes alone simply cannot.

gwd

I agree with uke on this. Not the tone but the idea to count cash flows when they occur. The effect depreciation has on current cash flows is if it is some kind of tax deduction for capitol equipment. Like if you use the bike in your business. But these arguments seem silly, going from car dependent to car free affects everyone differently but most car free people who post here seem to think the changes saved them money.

wahoonc

Depends on where you live and the availability of mass transit. I was working 255 miles from home and it was cheaper and faster to take the train than to drive. Admittedly that is the exception rather than the rule. When I was in college it was Greyhound. I would get out of class on Friday nights, ride the city bus to the bus station, get a ticket for GH and be home in a bit under 3 hours. Yes I could have driven it directly in less time, but what I spent in 4 years in bus tickets was less than 3 months of payments, upkeep and insurance on a car. You have to choose what is going to work for you. FWIW I am currently car light but still drive a company vehicle 30k miles a year

Aaron

gwd

This is a weird perspective that keeps popping up on this forum. When I became car free I retained the ability to rent a car. Four of us rented one just a few years ago for a NYC road trip. I think that we car free can also hop on a bus or train or call a cab or ambulance too. Actually, I visit my family more since ditching the car than I did when car dependent. I do it the same way I did when I had a car, I take a train or airplane. Selling the car didn't prevent me from making reservations.

sharkey00

Here is my experience with my last car. Car was a sedan average gas mileage of about 27 fuel price calculated at $2 per gallon.
Purchase Price 1800 - sale price 4500 = 13500
Annual maintenance 200 * 7 - 1400
Repairs - Brakes 800
some switch - 200
some leak 300
power steering pump - 350
Tires 600
Total: 2250
insurance average -1500 average (This may be high for you but this is the cost in my location) *7=10,500
gas 800 *7 = 5600

Total cost per year - $4,750

Also, from this example you can see my depreciation was $13,500 or $2000 per year. Using both purchase price and deprecation would lead to an inflated cost per year but using just depreciation per year will give you an accurate amount for how much value your car is losing per year.

My bike expenses are probably about $1,000 per year.

I-Like-To-Bike

The I.R.S deduction for bicycling mileage is zero, so presumably bicycle expenses are zero too, eh? Only a fool, or a zealot, or a foolish zealot would compare the costs of operating a bicycle with the costs of a car unless the one is a direct replacement for the other. Write back when the average bicyclist puts 15,000 miles a year on a bicycle and a bicycle proves out to be a direct 24/7/365 transportation replacement for a privately owned motor vehicle for the typical American family.

Cars have certain expenses that car free people don't pay, true, cars also provide transportation service and flexibility that car free people do with out. There are costs to doing without a car in American society, if you choose to ignore them them or "gloat" about being an ascetic, so be it.

BTW, what does your father pay for his automobile that you use to admirably perform chores for him when you visit him on weekends? Does he pay $8,000+/year just to keep that car on hand for YOUR convenience? Wouldn't it be cheaper to haul him around town on a bakfiet? Look at all the money that could be saved.

I-Like-To-Bike

My new 1991 Ford Festiva cost $5,600 cash in Iowa. It even came with an am/fm tape player and sun roof, but not much else . It got 40+ mpg for six years and I paid $25 total ( for a new distributor cap) in repair costs plus the costs of oil changes for 60,000 miles of use to include car pooling the 37 miles each way to work. Let the car free math wizards figure out how much I could have saved and improved my family's lifestyle by using a bicycle instead for those 60,000 miles. I sold it for $2500 in perfect working shape before moving to Germany in 1997

cerewa

The average family on earth does not have a car. The average family on earth would also be better off if Americans followed their lead, and lived without privately owned motor vehicles.

I-Like-To-Bike

You can choose to widen the scope to the "average family on earth" rather than the subject at hand, if you think that adds anything relevant to the discussion, I think it just makes you look foolish.

uke

Thank you. It's fine to make an argument in either direction as long as we use real transfers of cash.

This is another good example of how car ownership isn't necessarily an expensive affair.

bragi

How is paying $10,000 and getting nothing in return a non-cash expense? What is a non-cash expense, anyway? (And, please, let's keep this civil. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I bear you any ill-will.)

zeppinger

If anyone would care to, though I dont really, they could calculate the amount of money lost due to investment in a car? What I mean is that if you dont want to count depreciation as cost of onwership how about loss of opurtunity. If you buy a cheap car, lets say 10,000 just because it is a round number though admittedly higher than most of us cheap *******s would pay, and you sell it 10 years later for 4,000 then did you really only lose 6,000? What if you had put that money into a "real investment" and gotten 15% back? I think depreciation is a very important hidden factor in car ownership. So does AAA, Consumer Reports, and Wallstreet Journal. Do these people have hidden liberal agendas?

bragi

I assume that your SUV is paid for, you only have liability insurance, and that you don't drive it very often. If that's the case, I don't see why it's a problem to own a car. If everyone were like you, the US would be a healthier, more livable, far richer country. In my case, I drove pretty much everywhere, and so had the expenses associated with a lot of driving, and borrowed money to get the car in the first place. My insurance was expensive because of an earlier car-free period. For reasons I don't understand, if your record shows a period of no car ownership and no insurance, insurance companies assume the worst, and you end up paying pretty hefty premiums if you resume.

For comparison, I quickly polled my car-driving friends about how much they spend per month on their cars, and not one of them came in under $450/month, or $5400/year, per vehicle. (Most have more than one car.) One guy does have an old Toyota pickup that only costs him about $300/year, but he only uses it for gardening purposes once in a great while, so he's wondering if it's even worth it to hold on to the thing.

I-Like-To-Bike

see: https://67.201.16.77/showpost.php?p=8706148&postcount=51
Read it again if you don't understand.

Cars are not purchased as investments and you only are fooling yourself with your sophomoric investment analogy.

nanter

Are you serious? Sophomoric investment analogy? Do you have a propensity for resorting to personal attacks when you don't understand the point someone is making?

He's talking about the opportunity cost of the money that has been used to purchase that vehicle. Instead of using it to buy that vehicle, it could have been used to obtain a return in one of a number of different yield-generating investments. That means that simply looking at the purchase price is not telling the whole story - it is actually costing the car buyer more. Look up "time value of money" and gain some sorely needed "sophomoric investment" knowledge.

uke

If you poured your life savings into lottery tickets tonight, you could wake up a millionaire tomorrow. Does this mean you're losing millions of dollars each night you don't play the lottery?

I-Like-To-Bike

Cars are not investments, get it? They are not meant to provide a monetary yield.
Presumably all money spent on food and clothing and every other essential should also be considered as investments where the money could/should have been spent on yield generating investments.

Cars are not investments, get it?

uke

I think a big problem here is that a significant number of car-free advocates (as judged by this thread) don't understand the meaning of a sunk cost. Let's let wikipedia help:

nanter

Uh, yeah, I never said cars were investments. I was simply trying to help you understand some basic economic concepts, here.

If cars were essential, everyone would have one. It seems, by the very existence of this forum, that that is not true.

Determining cost of ownership, which I believe is the purpose of this thread, is impossible without accounting for time value of money. That was his point, and even with your repeated attacks and infantilism (get it? Again, are you serious?), it's germane to the discussion.

uke

By using the "time value of money" as an excuse, you can justify any purchase you value and demean any purchase you don't.

nanter

Not at all. For the purchase of a bicycle and all associated gear and equipment, if you are trying to determine a true total cost of ownership, you need to also factor in time value of money. Then you can make a fair comparison between the two.

uke

Several people in this thread (including myself) have already determined the costs of ownership of our vehicles (whether cars, trucks, or bicycles). If you find it impossible, your motives are suspect, not the calculations.

I-Like-To-Bike

Exaggerating the costs of car ownership, while ignoring the non monetary value provided in order to somehow promote (or "gloat" about) the virtue/benefits of car free self denial/asceticism is the purpose of this and similar threads on LCF. I suggest you return to the Road Cycling forum and take your "help" and explanations of the purposes of LCF threads with you.

bragi

ILTB: many of your observations are quite perceptive. If you refrained from making personal attacks in the process of making those observations, people would be more apt to look at your ideas in the calm light of reason. As things now stand, you tend to just make people react to the attacks instead of considering your observations.

In my own experience, I find that being car-free is a lot less expensive, and a lot more enjoyable, than owning a car. Buying a car, a piece of machinery that is going to cost, at minimum, $5000 (for something reliable) just to purchase, and then insuring it, fixing it, putting fuel in it, licensing it every year, and possibly managing debt to acquire it in the first place, has got to be a much more expensive prospect than buying a bike, another piece of machinery that, in its entirety, contains far less metal than a typical car door, and is much easier to maintain. If you find that you have the resources to own a car, decide you actually need one, and use it only when necessary, I have no issue with you. But please don't attack people that have made another choice, and don't pretend that car ownership doesn't involve significant expense.