My husband has 3 kids from a previous relationship (age 9, 11, 13), and I'm pregnant with our first together. I drive a 2-door Pontiac G5 2010 given to me (new at the time) by my grandfather when I finished my Masters. My husband, age 45, has never learned to drive (long story), but now has his learner's. He's gotten by with riding the bus, walking and biking his whole life and isn't even that keen on driving, but with a baby on the way, I think it would be helpful, especially since right now I'm doing all the driving when we pick up his kids (4 hour one-way), drive them back to us, drive them back home, and drive ourselves back. That's 16+ hours of driving in a long weekend sometimes. We've also stayed at Airbnb's in their city, but often my family and some of my husband's family (who live closer to us) want to see the kids for holidays.
My car currently has 260,000km (in Canada) and eventually will need to be replaced with something (It has so many km's because for years I did a ridiculous commute of 1.5-2.5 hours one way to work). I have 2 jobs now, both of which I can walk to, and my husband takes the bus. He's looking for a new job with better pay (especially with baby on the way), but right now he takes the bus. He'd probably bike to work most of the time if he could, but winters here are pretty brutal. We'll only ever have one vehicle.
In terms of hobbies, we like biking and camping. My husband would also love to get into kayaking as we live near tons of water. He's worked for 10 years in the outdoor gear industry.
We've talked about getting a 6 or 7-seater so that when his kids visit, all 6 of us can fit. We've been together only 2 years (and 1 of those years was actually 5000km from his kids so they had to fly to see us) so we don't have a great historical precedent on visits, but it seems we see them for 2-3 weeks in the summer, and an additional 3 weekends where we visit them in their city, followed by an extended holiday visit for 4-7 days (Easter or Christmas).
Right now, if you can believe it, we squeeze the 3 kids, AND our dog, on camping trips with the trunk absolutely packed to the max. No roof rack.
My question is - does it make sense to get a 6 or 7 seater when we only see them so infrequently? Yes, a van would come in handy for camping, we wouldn't drive it much for work, and it would be way more convenient for visiting with them. But it's less fuel efficient, and comes with a higher price tag generally.
The alternative would be to get a 5-seater (wagon or maybe compact crossover for camping storage, roof racks, a baby and the dog).... and then rent a van when we visit the kids. Looking at Costco car rentals (usually the best rate), it's $700 (Canadian) per week. So we'd be looking at potentially $2800 a year. For a baby mustachian, I'm not that savvy with math, so I'm hoping someone can help me here with the logic and financials of either choice.
To complicate things, his partner has very questionable parenting skills (undiagnosed ADHD, paranoid and suspicious, house is in near-derelict condition, emotional dysregulation), and we've been considering that his kids (especially his son, the oldest) at some point might choose to come live with us.
We're currently renting a house right now, and the same struggle applies for number of bedrooms when considering buying a house. (One boy, two girls). Feel free to chime in on that front too, LOL.
Thanks in advance!!
