Do you track vehicle mileage?

[MustacheMike]

I'm wondering,when you use a vehicle, if you budget or track it based on the IRS/CRA's commonly accepted rate per mile or kilometre? Say if you drove 15 km in a month, would you multiply that by the .50 or whichever number you use and count it as a line item?

I know MMM uses this kind of number in his cost of commuting post, but is it worthwhile tracking it as a budget item? If so, what are the elements it includes? I'm aware that it includes fuel, depreciation and maintenance, but does it also include insurance?

I use YNAB and I'm currently looking at taking public transportation. Besides putting less milage on the odometer and being able to reduce my monthly budget for insurance (by what amount, I don't know yet), I'm actually spending $20 more in my budget for a month-long bus pass when compared to the fuel I'm saving.

Let me know how you guys track mileage.

Thanks!

[happy]

Every year or so, I add up the cost of insurance/rego/servicing plus fuel plus depreciation and divide by the number of KM I do, to give me c/km. Our tax dept publishes standard rates but I like to add up my own.  The older the car  the more depreciation and insurance (? not sure about rego) will decrease. Servicing might stay the same or get more if you are unlucky. If you start reducing how much you use the car,  then the cost/km will change again.

The first time I did this I nearly died of shock when I realised a trip to work or to town  and back cost me about $30 each time.

[secondcor521]

I just have an Auto category in Quicken with the following subcategories (from memory, might miss one):  Fuel, Depreciation, Insurance, Other (license plates, vehicle registration, smog check), Repairs, Maintenance (oil changes, batteries, tires).

I've minimized my Auto category as much as I really ever could.  I flirt with the biking to work thing, but haven't yet for all the typical reasons excuses.  I think my actual costs over the past few years have been lower than the IRS number by a fair bit because I have an old, fuel-efficient, good quality, non-depreciating car (95 Toyota Corolla).

I'll use the IRS rate on my taxes for charity miles, and sometimes I'll use that as the fully loaded vehicle cost if I'm considering driving vs. flying, although that doesn't usually make the final decision on how I travel.

2Cor521

[ketchup]

I have my own dorky spreadsheet of vehicle expenses since I bought my car in April. Including everything (cost of purchasing my car, insurance, gas, maintenance, and repairs), my driving cost is 25 cents a mile. If I factor out everything except gas, maintenance, and repairs (in other words, so I just look at strictly mile-dependent costs), it goes down to 11 cents per mile.

[Ozstache]

My cars are under a salary package arrangement and their kilometres are tracked through fuel card use.

With one of my cars, I have to do a minimum of 15000 kms per year otherwise, otherwise I get hit with about $1300 fringe benefits tax. The silly thing is that this arrangement encourages you to drive for the heck of it just to meet your kilometre target, because the extra tax is more than the cost of fuel to get you there, especially if you are close to making the target.

Fortunately, these tax laws changed recently, and now there is no penalty for undershooting kilometre estimates with any new salary package arrangement established. My second car (Fester the diesel Ford Fiesta) is under this new arrangement.

[Nords]

I'm wondering,when you use a vehicle, if you budget or track it based on the IRS/CRA's commonly accepted rate per mile or kilometre?
Let me know how you guys track mileage.
Thanks!

I only track it for three things:
1.  Mileage for maintaining/repairing our rental property (spreadsheet).
2.  Mileage for volunteer work (unreimbursed).
3.  Keeping track of the car's MPG in case something goes bad and kills the gas consumption before generating an alert code.  But that's a 30-year-old habit and these days our Priuses track their MPG on their own display screens.

Oahu is a 30x40-mile island and we drive a total of less than 5000 miles per year anyway, so there's not much to track.  Spouse drives her car so seldom that I'm beginning to wonder if I should add fuel stabilizer to its gas tank.  When our daughter graduates from college in 2014 then it might be worth selling one of them (the cars, not our daughter).