[CiPHPerCoder]

> If you bought a sensible car, your monthly costs could be much lower.

$12,041 over 6 years is $2006 per year, which is about $167 per month.

All of my friends pay about that much just for car insurance every month. Throw in a car payment ($200/mo. - $500/mo. depending on the terms of the lease), gas, and maintenance (regular oil changes, tire replacements, etc.) and you'll end up way north of $12,000 after 6 years.

[sokoloff]

You have multiple friends paying $2K/yr for car insurance? Are they amateur demolition derby drivers?

I pay just over half of that for three cars and two adult drivers. (and in Massachusetts, which does not have a fully open/competitive insurance market.)

[patcheudor]

Auto insurance rates are greatly variable throughout the US and many people cary more than state minimums. Near $200/mo., is pretty normal in California. My auto insurance, with a perfect record is $3100/yr with a $5 million umbrella for three cars and two adult drivers in Idaho.

[notyourwork]

I just renewed my insurance in SF for $555/6 months. I have progressive, high deductible but coverage for me, other driver and all that (100/300/100).

[infinitone]

Thats pretty good. Can you share a bit more details about your demographics/driving history. I pay ~1600/yr with metromile and i have a good driving history. I'm in SoCal.

[notyourwork]

Surely - Demographic, ~30 year old male, married. (Getting married didn't drop it as much as I was hoping but did decrease it $150/year.)

Wife and I have not had any traffic infractions in over 3 years.

I haven't had a traffic infraction in at least 3 years (moved to West coast 3 years ago). ~30 year old male, married and are insuring a 2015 Cherokee with $2,500 deductibles.

My advice, if you can set aside $2,500 or have it in savings I would move your deductible up and use insurance for severe accidents. Don't use insurance to replace a cracked windshield.

[chrisconroy]

FWIW, depending on your state and policy, "glass only" claims don't affect your premiums. Agreed with the general principle of a higher deductible though.

[krisdol]

As another data point, perfect record, about $700 a year in insurance for my spouse and I sharing a car in Boston.

[sokoloff]

Agreed on the state minimums, which are a joke ($20K and $40K I think here).

We carry many multiples of the state minimum, which was needed to secure an umbrella policy for the excess. That doesn't include the umbrella, which we have in place mostly for other reasons (and is cheap).

[lscharen]

I'll throw a data point in here: Three vehicles (2014, 2009, 2006), no accidents, rural Midwest. ~$2,000/yr for insurance with standard 100/300/100 coverage.

[danvasquez29]

different states' laws can have a major impact. I have no experience with insurance in MA, but in Michigan 2k/yr per car would be considered fairly cheap. My insurance is routinely near the cost of the car payment itself, and I have a good record and multi-product discounts with my provider.

We definitely have a problem here in this state though.

[peterwwillis]

I once had a payment to an insurance company lapse, so I was technically without coverage for one month. Because of this, all insurance providers insisted the bare minimum I could pay for any auto insurance was $400/month. Then I got a speeding ticket, and it went up to $600/month, and then $800/month. That's $9,600 a year, for auto insurance, for one person. (Fuck you, Progressive)

They claimed the rate would stay that way for several years, so I got rid of my car. I was going to get a car again once the rate lowered, but it turns out I didn't need one. Now I'm saving bundles of cash. (So, in a weird, way: Thanks, Progressive)

[devonkim]

I used to have to pay several hundred dollars / mo after I had a major accident with a personal injury involved and was in my late teens / early 20s in Washington state. The policy renewals were nearly $3k each time for just myself even under my parents’ policy (I was supposed to not be insurance due to the massive claim the company ate). I’ve heard of a special insurance policy for a basically legally blind driver that gets in accidents frequently that costs $800+ / mo.

Even the most bare bones policy I could find after that dropped off my record was $140 / mo for state minimum coverage at 22.

[jandrese]

I paid more than that when I was a teenager because insurance companies assumed I'd be street racing like all teenage boys apparently. It took less than a year to spend more on the insurance than I did on the car. Of course the cost of your own car barely counts in insurance rates, which are dominated by healthcare costs for the people you hit but don't quite kill.

Annoyingly I never made a claim so all of that money was wasted in the end.

[TACIXAT]

Young men get hit pretty hard on insurance prices. It was looking like 100$ per month for me and was enough to push a car payment into the monthly expense range I didn't care to have. I work from home though, so I don't drive a lot and have the luxury of not owning a vehicle. I could take Lyfts everywhere I go and definitely come out ahead of a car payment + insurance.

[CiPHPerCoder]

I live in Florida. Paying less than $200/mo. for insurance before the age of 25 is almost unheard of.

[dibujante]

I live in Vancouver. Insurance for new drivers can start as high as $5000/year.

[cableshaft]

I have a license and a car, my girlfriend doesn't.

My girlfriend takes an Uber home from work every day right now (I drop her off in the morning then head to work. I'm still at work when she gets off work). It costs her an average of $25 per trip. 25 * 5 days a week * 4 weeks per month = $500/month in expenses. That's for a single 20 minute Uber (usually Lyft now, it's been cheaper) a day, that's it. I'm surprised the OP can get away with $167 in Uber expenses doing without two cars as the OP suggests.

It's about 40 extra miles I drive a day for her also, since her work is in the opposite direction of mine, so tack on the extra maintenance required for 800 miles per month on my car (hasn't been too much yet, but the car is starting to get old... let's say $40/month ), along with that much in gas (right now about $104 a month), and our total cost per month for her to go without a car is $644 a month.

My car payment is about $300 a month, so let's assume she can find the same or even less in a lease, especially since her credit is better, and I already estimated the fuel and maintenance as $140, but it'd transfer over to her paying it. Then she'd probably have to pay about $100 a month for car insurance (I pay less, but she'd be a new driver), and therefore our total costs for her to drive are probably around $540 a month, or about $100 a month cheaper.

To me that's a pretty slim margin. The main reason I wouldn't mind her starting to drive is it wouldn't be necessary to take her to certain places and save me an hour out of the day every day, not due to savings. Which I always assumed we would save a lot of money if she drove, until I did the math.

Also I live in the suburbs so if neither of us had cars our Uber expenses would be like $2006 a month, not per year, based on how much we drive currently. But it does look like having only 1 car in the household might be feasible, instead of the assumed 1 car per individual, like was the default in the previous generation.

[NDizzle]

North of $12,000 and you'll own a car. The no-car-movement is great for cities and people with lots of patience.

You'll never, ever take Land Cruisers away from me.

[CiPHPerCoder]

> The no-car-movement is great for cities and people with lots of patience.

I don't own car (nor have any intention of doing so) due to being too blind to drive safely, but not blind enough for any sort of government assistance.

(I'm not legally prevented from driving, I'm being considerate of the safety of others.)

[saudioger]

>The no-car-movement is great for cities and people with lots of patience.

Unfortunately Uber is kind of undermining public transportation though. In my city transit ridership is down, which ultimately impacts funding.

I can sit outside any sort of venue/party/bar and watch Ubers pull up by the dozen. 5 years ago most of those people would have been walking to public transit because cabs were more realistically priced (for the medallion owners at least, the drivers often got shafted there too). Uber trips often cost less than the price of simply stepping foot inside a taxi.

I've talked to my neighbors (6 college students sharing a house), and they've literally never taken public transit since living in the city, and we're ~5 minutes from a major bus station and ~10 minutes from a subway station. I was flabbergasted.

Of course, traffic is worse than ever (this is attributable to multiple factors not limited to Uber/Lyft).

[krisdol]

I can't stand what ubers and lyft do to congestion. The drivers have no incentive to stop in marked areas or even pull over to the side when picking up/dropping off. Most of our busier two-lane streets are now 1-lane congested behemoths thanks to ride "sharing". It does get me on the bike more though. There aren't enough cops to enforce or care about the problem, and unlike some European countries, the culture in the US around citizens reporting traffic violations is nearly non-existent, so everyone gets away with it.

[Driverswanted]

Amen. Much of hackernews fails to understand that some people love driving.

Car culture is huge thing. I just bought an Audi S3, and derive pleasure whenever I hit the throttle.

[nealmueller]

Hi, Neal here, I authored this analysis. I totally get you. I love driving. M3 is the ultimate driving machine (tm). But sometimes I prefer to do other things. Selling my car let's me drive when I want to and ride when I want to. I've found my correct ratio is 1% driving, 99% other things. Each person will have their own ratio.

[MasterPI]

Exaclty. I just made a similar comment down below saying that some people choose a car with their heart not their head.

[gormz]

Okay, but you can expect a car to last upwards of 10 and you own it. If you decide you want to drive down the coast, you can do just that. I think services like this are way overhyped and wouldn't exist if they saved you money.

[zilian]

Well they actually operate at a loss, so it wouldn't be so surprising if you save money using uber instead of owning a car. Magic VC money subsidize your trips ;)

[SpecialistEMT]

this myth again.

uber makes money on every ride. they operate at a loss annually because they invest everything in expanding to avoid paying taxes - like most companies do.

[zilian]

It's quite true that they make money on every ride - what I meant is that we get "cheap" rides while they try to win a "winner-takes-all" monopoly, because they can afford to "invest" in expanding, with heavy losses (4.5B in 2017).

It's also true that it's not sure they will ever reach profitability. Therefore, my comment.

[the_gastropod]

> Throw in a car payment

They said sensible car. A car you need a loan for is not a sensible car.

[other_herbert]

At least last year, "new car loans" had a really low rate, and I think as long as it's newer than 3 years old and less than 30k miles or something a used car still qualifies.. if you have money making more in interest than the loan percentage, you shouldn't pay cash (assuming you have greater than the financed amount earning interest)…

[the_gastropod]

Interest isn't the killer, it's the insurance. When you owe money on a car, you're typically required to hold full coverage insurance on the car. That is not cheap.

[Driverswanted]

Being as how you can finance a new car for 0% interest, why would you pay cash? Sounds like you're giving terrible advice.

[rsynnott]

Well, for a start, if you're looking to save money, you certainly shouldn't be buying a new car.

[justin66]

That's not "certain." When market conditions change, you'll occasionally be able to get a new car for less than what you'd pay for a used one of the same type. Drastic changes in fuel cost and manufacturers discontinuing an unpopular model are the sorts of things that lead to this situation.

[gregimba]

You do realize profit is built into a 0% loan right? Its essentially an upfront interest payment for the duration of the loan.

[Driverswanted]

What on earth do you mean. Have you ever bought a car?

You negotiate the price you are willing to pay. The dealer has no idea if you are leasing, paying cash, or financing. The all-in price is either financed or leased at a specified interest rate. They do not "add in" an up front payment. That doesn't even make sense, and would be incredibly misleading.

If we negotiate $25,000 for the car,and I finance at 0%, you are saying they up the price to $27,500 to "build in a profit"? Nonsense. The numbers are in front of you and you can do the calculations yourself with high school math. 0% is 0%.

You are totally out of your element and shouldnt be providing financial advice. Maybe that's why the dealer rips you off.

[smogcutter]

You're wrong. Cash back rebate offers usually don't apply to the 0% apr deal, so the amount financed will be higher. Which option is better depends on the size of the rebate, what interest rate you can get outside the low apr deal, and the amount financed.

Edmunds has a calculator if you need help with the high school math: https://www.edmunds.com/calculators/incentives-rebates.html

[donarb]

If the choice is between you getting a "sweet deal" or the dealer making a profit, you will lose every time. Rebates and magic 0% interest are designed to get you to sign on the dotted line without reading the fine print.

[CiPHPerCoder]

1. The two-word phrase sensible car was not defined by the comment I replied to; it was left up to interpretation.

2. Even if I take your assumption as the other poster's definition of sensible and remove any car payment, gas + insurance + maintenance yields a 6 year cost above $12k. My point stands.

[the_gastropod]

> gas + insurance + maintenance yields a 6 year cost above $12k

This will depend on the individual circumstances. Liability insurance is significantly cheaper than full coverage. Average annual liability insurance is ~$552/year [1]. Driving the ridiculous 12k miles per year that average americans drive, a Prius would burn roughly 226 gallons of gas. At today's price of gas ($2.94), that's $664/yr. At 6 years insurance and gas will run you $7,296. I'm very skeptical of depreciation + maintenance blowing $4,704 over 6 years on a Prius...

[1] https://www.carinsurance.com/average-rates-by-age.aspx

[CiPHPerCoder]

Hahaha, $552/year for car insurance in Florida?

The high cost of car insurance, coupled with the low wages in this state, are a significant factor that kept a lot of my peers in poverty well out of high school. The usual story goes like this:

  - Reliant on a hand-me-down car to get to work.
  - Work barely pays for rent, car insurance, gas, and food.
  - Car needs maintenance but no money for that.

The end result is predictable: A lot of Floridians work for just enough money to be able to get to work, and as soon as this equilibrium is shattered, our lives fall apart.

Charitably, I think the lowest I've seen anyone's insurance payment in this state is $89/month, because they were over the age of 25 and their car fit the requirements for lower insurance rates nicely. They still had a car payment ($400/mo. IIRC) though.

[the_gastropod]

> the lowest I've seen anyone's insurance payment in this state is $89/month [...] They still had a car payment ($400/mo. IIRC) though.

Again: liability insurance is a different thing. When you don't own your car (aka when you take a car loan), you are required to have insurance that can cover the cost of the car. When you own your car, you only need to pay for liability insurance, which is much cheaper.

Your story is all too common in the U.S. It's expensive being poor here. The frugal solution is to have money to buy a car outright. It's tough getting out from under that dilemma.

[gormz]

Yup. There are plenty of sensible options that you can buy outright. Plenty of japanese cars will last well over 200k miles. If you can't afford a new car, get a used one. There's a culture in the US that makes us way to comfortable taking out loans.