Learning, Sharing, and Teaching > Ask a Mustachian

Has anyone evaluated just not having a car and riding a bike/Uber/car rental?

(1/8) > >>

FIRERoad:
When looking at my budget and currently being upset with insurance companies I'm having the thought of just not having a car.  Has anyone that is used to driving a car daily evaluated just not having a car at all and riding a bike and just using Uber/Lyft or renting a car as needed?  Has anyone gone to the trouble of somehow calculating if it would be cheaper to do this rather than pay insurance, fuel, maintenance, car depreciation, registration?

I mean if I just paid cash for my next living arrangement I would still have prop taxes, insurance, maintenance and other associated utilities and such but that would significantly reduce my budget.  Maybe HOAs

Food I am trying to deep dive more but it is not a huge expense and I am trying to figure out my options on providing my own health insurance if not employed or part time employed / self employed.

Car is the other big chunk!  Would it make sense to just sell it, drop insurance, and not pay for gas anymore? If I had a family could this be done?  I know people do it where there is public transportation or by necessity.  I know it would just take what seems like a huge lifestyle adjustment on my part but just curious if anyone else has gone down this thought process rabbit hole?  Or maybe just try it for a while and give the big FU to the auto insurance companies for a while.

Would be pretty tough to take a potential partner on dates and could be seen as an oddball.  How small is the pool of partners that would be okay with this?
Weather could be a factor of inconvenience or cause punctuality issues. 
Would limit range of employment type or distance to potential employers
I guess I should also plan to sell my nice bike rack and adjust to just not mountain biking or doing triathlons or driving to destinations to ride (which sometimes feels stupid and sometimes is nice)
I could sell all my automotive tools, air compressor and other things since I won't be maintaining a car (paid for college as a mechanic) and have less stuff.

I've never taken an Uber and only rode public transportation when I was little with my grandma.  I have rented cars and know some places have short term rentals.  No idea yet if this makes sense or how much.  Like what trips would I really need a vehicle for?  If I had all my needs locally or near home?  Grocery store, doctor, dentist.  I could do a long ride to the beach and not pay for parking!  I guess employment and other activities would be my concern.

What additional risk am I putting myself in riding a bicycle everywhere all the time?  I'm a cyclist and have ridden in traffic and have been lucky.  But people are idiots and more and more distracted and rushed everyday.  It kind of makes me want to move somewhere else where the lifestyle is not well, like here.  But I would miss my family and I still need a job. 

Anyway, enough rambling.  Any thoughts or good discussion threads I have not seen?

BrightFIRE:
Before you make any decisions, you need to know the answers to the questions you are asking. For 1 month, note every time you use the car. If you already track your expenses, those questions about gas, insurance, registration, etc. should be easy to answer by looking at historical trends. If not, dig up those numbers. Try taking Uber once a week when you would have used the car. Try biking instead of driving. See if you like it or find it inconvenient. I'm unclear from your comments whether you have access to transit and your profile doesn't say where you live. If you do, try it out and see how good/bad it is.

18 years ago I moved from central Florida to Philadelphia and gave up my car. It didn't bother me at all. I was carless for 10 years until I met my SO, who already had a car. Mostly it was fine, sometimes it was a pain in the neck - this was before carsharing or Uber or any of that, and the bus didn't always go where I needed, so sometimes I would talk friends into driving me to say, Ikea to pick up a piece of furniture. It's not uncommon for people to be carless in a big city, so I would never consider that to be weird.

My SO used to have a clown commute (1-2 hrs ONE WAY). He got a job in the city and now either takes the subway or walks to work and the car sits mostly unused. And yet, when I ran the numbers, it was still cheaper to own the car than give it up. We have family in places that transit doesn't reach; we like to go hiking/camping in places transit doesn't reach; I sometimes go to UPick fruit places, which transit doesn't reach; that kind of thing. I estimated how many times a year we'd have to rent a car, then I compared that to joining a carshare and their fees, then I compared that to the car. The car was still cheaper. I did the math, though, so I can state that with certainty. You may find the car is more expensive, but you have to do the math.

Have you done all you can to lower your insurance costs? Raise your deductible, let them know if you're driving a lot less, etc.? When my SO went from the clown commute to under 12,000 miles a year (I think that's the number), his insurance dropped like a rock. We use Geico and it even beat out Metromile.

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face because you're mad at some insurance company - it won't hurt them if you leave.

dreadmoose:
I am currently attempting this my DW (no kids). We live downtown in a major center and our vehicle was sitting unused for most of the year. It was a Ford Sport-trac Adrenalin so was also terrible on gas (bought for business purposes as it's rated the same as much larger truck so my rate was higher).

We are tracking extra taxis / ubers and all gas / insurance, car rentals to measure against vehicle ownership.

It has only been one month without a vehicle but the numbers are leaning towards staying without one for as long as possible, that could change with the values run against a cheaper to maintain vehicle so we're doing this as a stop gap until we either get used to the life or can't deal without a vehicle anymore (potentially when little ones arrive).

I'm posting so I remember to follow up with my numbers once they've averaged out a bit more than currently.

diapasoun:
Yes, I have done the math. I work remotely 80% of the time, and drive/take transit in to work the other 20% (more than 140 miles round trip). I use the car almost entirely to get to work -- I maybe use it once or twice a month for non-work-related driving, and at distances that would easily be Lyft-able.

Selling the car and taking only transit would save me money -- I can't remember exactly, but definitely over $1k/year. However, it would also mean that my 20% commute, which is already 5 hours round trip, would edge up to over 6 hours. It would also preclude me applying to any jobs that aren't accessible by public transit, and I don't want to make that impossible. For the moment, I've therefore decided to stick with the car.

Kepler:
I've done this - obviously you have to run the numbers to see if it will work in your situation.  I transitioned into it by signing up to a car share service (where you can book cars by the hour, and pay a flat fee for things like insurance), but after about 18 months just shifted to not having a car at all.  This is obviously heavily reliant on the state of public transport and/or walkability/bikability in your area.  I'm in a walkable neighbourhood, with good public transport into a workplace that I don't have to commute to every day, where I can get a lot of work done on the commute - but being in a neighbourhood that makes this possible, also increases the cost of housing, so it's possibly worth taking that into account in any calculations you make.

Every time I have to rent a car or take a taxi, I wince at the cost and think how much easier it would be to have a car.  Then I revisit my spreadsheets and just... nah... much cheaper this way...  But this might not be the case for you.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page