We finally hit the last nail in a 2 month saga of becoming a 1 car family(kinda) and being debt free.
What happened...
1. My wife got a new job downtown, which started all of this. We looked at parking costs, which racked up to NEARLY $300 A MONTH. To park a car? Jesus
2. We found out the bus going downtown, not only goes past our driveway, but also stops if anyone waves it down. The cost? $35 A MONTH (After her company throws in a $50 subsidy!) It now picks her up and drops her off at our house. WOW!
3. We paid off the last $14k I owed on a toy <- not very MMM but hey... (I use it mostly for fun events)
4. We sold BOTH, my commuter car AND her car.
5. We bought a VOLT, virtually eliminating our remaining gasoline use. The gas savings alone is >$100
The net....
We basically save around $200 a month (or MORE).
We now pay less insurance because one less car
Nearly no gasoline because Volt
...and a host of other hard-to-quantify costs, like, the volt has 100,000 LESS miles than my old car (45k vs 145k), the volt won't need certain repairs like brakes, oil changes are very rare ect ect.
Not to mention we are now consumer debt free. (Which isn't a massive deal other than physiologically) We have been neglecting adding to our 320k stache in the meantime, which I feel bad about but... BACK ON TRACK NOW!
This move basically drops our FIRE # by $60,000 (200*12*25) which cut our target date by 6 to 9 months.
Most of all, I am glad it's over, shopping for the right car, private selling two cars, paying off loans ect ect ect just eats up so much time! Worth it!