Anyone give up their car?

[Eric222]

I'm thinking of becoming carless (2 kids, 3 and 6) in a city with decent mass transit and crappy winters.

Who here has given up their car? 
Are you glad you did?
Why or why not?

[Jeremy E.]

I haven't given mine up yet, but I've currently got my car listed on craigslist. However my girlfriend still has a car that I'll use if I need one. I live in Eastern Washington, which has snow most of the winter. I recently bought an electric bike for my 17 mile (34 mile round trip) commute mon-fri. Hopefully it'll be okay in the snow.

[Eric222]

I'll be curious to hear how your bike does in the winter!  The idea of electric bikes intrigues me, it just wouldn't make me any faster in the city.

I'm trying to do my much shorter commute (4mi) on a road bike with somewhat grippy tires.  I'm confident it will work well in snow and slush, but ice is going to be bad.  At least I have mass transit backup.  I imagine that you don't have that luxury...

[windypig]

If you already have a paid off car and dont have to pay for offstreet parking I would probably keep it. If you didnt have a car already I would probably say that you dont need one and can get by on public transit, walking, biking,  zipcar, uber and come out on top of buying a car.

[reader2580]

One's psychology on transportation spending has to change a bit with no car and looking at Hourcar, Zipcar, and such.  When you need such services you might be put off by the price of using a car service.  If you owned a car you might just make the trip without much thinking about it.  You figure you own the car and are paying insurance on it.  MMM would probably say that not using the car sharing service is a good thing.

I own a motorhome (totally anti-mustachian I know) outright.  Before I bought the motorhome I looked at renting every year.  The cost of renting for an 8 day 4000 mile trip was something like $3,000 plus the fuel.  Somehow I couldn't see spending $5000 to $6000 for a trip because all that money gets spent at once.  Spending $2,000 a year keeping a motorhome going over the course of a year doesn't seem as bad.  (My friends split the fuel cost of the trip so I'm not spending as much as it sounds like.)

[Jeremy E.]

I'll be curious to hear how your bike does in the winter!  The idea of electric bikes intrigues me, it just wouldn't make me any faster in the city.

I'm trying to do my much shorter commute (4mi) on a road bike with somewhat grippy tires.  I'm confident it will work well in snow and slush, but ice is going to be bad.  At least I have mass transit backup.  I imagine that you don't have that luxury...

I've never even heard of mass transit backup haha, I live in a small town

[Bergal]

I went carless in May 2014 and it's been great.  DC has decent mass transit, lots of car sharing (Zipcar, Enterprise and Car2gos) and there's an Avis car rental 4 blocks from my house.  Before I gave up the car, I spent two months logging each trip (what it was for, how long etc) to know exactly how often I used the car and how much it was costing me to own it.  (Backstory - I had bought my first NEW car ever in 2012 - face punch I know.  Not only that but I financed it - double face punch! But since I rarely drove it, it was in fantastic shape with low mileage and I got a great price when I sold it.  Paid off the lien and had $5000 left over to invest. )   

It works for me because I live and work in a pretty small city.  I admit, I occasionally miss being able to jump in the car and go somewhere on a whim.  I do think it would be more challenging to go carless with kids - and with those Boston winters!  You might want to do a dry run before giving it up.   And run the numbers - if you own the car outright, it might be worth keeping it.  When I actually did the math, keeping my car didn't make sense.  YMMV, as they say! 

[Eric222]

I'm starting a 3 month dry run.  We'll see how the carless life goes.  If I can survive the winter without the car, I don't need it.

The kids love to take mass transit, much more than the car.  Only drawback is they are too big for me to haul on my bike, but not big enough to bike on the streets.  We'll see how it goes.

[Bergal]

Good luck with the dry run.  Keep us posted on your progress.  And good for you on raising kids that like an adventure!