The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Hadilly on December 01, 2017, 12:35:00 PM
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I would welcome your advice. We have a 2004 Jetta that are still in good shape. We also have a 2010 Honda Odyssey that we use primarily. We use our bikes a lot and over the past three months have experimented with only using the Odyssey. It has been fine.
I think that we should sell the Jetta. My husband feels perhaps we should keep it. Pros to keeping: it is paid off, insurance and registration are about $500 a year and it is trouble free for the most part. It serves as a back up car if we need it. Cons for keeping it: it is older, we don't really need it, it costs money, and we could sell it and invest the few thousand we could get for it. I also think that we could buy a used Prius for around $5000 if we decided we really needed another car in the future. Thoughts? What would you advise? Is there something I'm failing to consider? Thank you.
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If you've been using your bikes for a long time I'd say go ahead and sell it. If you've just started seriously commuting/shopping by bike over the last three months though, and don't have experience doing that for the entire winter, it might be worthwhile to hang on to the car until you're sure that you're okay with riding when it's colder, wet, snow, potentially salted or sanded roads, etc.
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If you are not using it and don't need it, get rid of it. You don't NEED a backup car (you can "uber" or rent as backup). At about 13 years old, you are going to get socked with repairs sooner or later:)
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What I would suggest is try going for a month or two without using the Jetta. Pretend it doesn't exist. If your life goes just fine without it, go ahead and sell it.
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We had two cars. Sold one off cold turkey about 6 months ago and have only had to use and Uber once in that time.
With the car depreciation, insurance, registration costs, etc. We figured we could take an Uber or taxi return fare once a fortnight and still be better off financially.
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Why not sell both and replace with one smaller, efficient car?
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Thanks everyone. Your responses are basically what I've been thinking. We've successfully done the multi-month experiment not using it. I do feel expensive repairs are not too far away.
I appreciate the suggestion to sell both cars and replace, but between multiple kids, car pools, field trips, skiing and camping, the minivan is great for those times. We generally don't drive it more than two or three days a week, so we are really not a high car use family, but when we are there is either a lot of stuff or people.
We are still in negotiations, but hopefully I'll be able to follow up with a sold update soon!