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The true cost of your car : $18.81 to turn the key

I'm going to use terribly gross numbers to help illustrate my point here, but they are numbers that are near and dear to my heart.

*Car Purchase : $40,000
*Car Insurance: $1000 / year
*Registration : $600 / year
Gas Mileage: $2000/ year 18 MPG @ $2.50 / gallon 15000 miles / year
Car Deprecation: $4000 / year (goes down as years go on)
Tires : $300 / year (1200/ 4 years)
Maintenance : $500 / year (goes up as years go on about directly in anti-correlation to Deprecation)

*Sunk costs meaning you own the car already therefore not using it doesn't change the costs.

But if we were to break down these numbers (also assuming NO financing, you paid cash for your car) your car costs you on average $8200 / year!!!!!! That has nothing to do with a car payment, what if you have a $600/month car payment?! Now you are north of $14000/ year or over $1000/ month!!!!!

Oh but I'm going to hear that the argument is that you have a much less expensive car, that gets almost 50 MPG! Like that dead sexy Prius (HAHA) Ok a Prius still costs 25K and keep in mind the calculation didn't include a car payment, so the only aspect that changes slightly is going to be $2000 in fuel. So turn that down to $500 in fuel you are still looking for well over $500/ month for that wonderful "Efficient" car.

Brings me back to ABC's of life. Again as I posted in the ABC's of life, the longer that car sits, the easier it is to have it sit there. You can have a direct effect on the both the maintenance and depreciation of your vehicle by not having miles put on it.

As an example, other than work related (required) miles my vehicle had approximately 1,000 miles last year. And NO commuting is NOT a required mile, those would be voluntary miles. Thus, excluding the sunk costs, my costs in the same situation are $138 in fuel, tires will rot before I need to replace them, maintenance goes to less than $75/ year or about $12/month and car depreciation goes to about half at $1500/ year $125/month. (deprecation: imagine a ten-year-old Ford F150 with 10,000 miles on it, you would be paying for a 2005, about $25,000 according to KBB, the truck retailed for about 40,000)  So owning my sitting car still costs me about $275/month but that is a whole heck of a lot better than the $683/month the average sucker is spending on their vehicle a month.

Let's boil this down a little bit, bike commuting would save the average American about $408 / month. That is still assuming that said person still owns a car! ABCs! Therefore again simple calculation average work days are 21.7. So every day you turn on your car to commute it costs you $18.81.

EVERY DAY YOU GET IN YOUR CAR TO COMMUTE IT COSTS YOU $18.81.

I want you to think about that the next time you turn the key in your car.

ABC's Always Be Cycling!




Sidenote, I wrote this very quickly and may need to make adjustments to my calculations, even still hopefully it paints the correct picture!






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