[jedberg]

You're right that it's way cheaper, but you did forget to account for the opportunity cost of the $17K up front (about $1700 in interest in a simple savings account, but depending on how you invested it, you may have done better).

[Retric]

The fit is probably worth more than 1700$ right now. You could also have invested the savings to make even more money.

Still, the goal is a ballpark not an exact number and that's plenty to say Uber would have been a poor fit.

[jedberg]

> The fit is probably worth more than 1700$ right now.

Yes but the $17K plus the interest would be $18.7K. :)

And like I said, it's still a much better deal than Uber, but the opportunity cost of the up front money is often missed in these types of calculations, and can be significant.

[Infernal]

I think you're both making good points here but just to clarify:

I did not account for the interest that could've been earned on that $17k (which could conservatively be $1700, aggressively could've been another $17k).

I also did not account for the residual value of a 10 year old 120k mile Honda Fit, which is probably in the $5k range.

[Retric]

17k - 700$ a month stops being 17k very quickly.

You need to look at pricinciple - expenses + interest for each month on both sides. Consider if he had a pile of money to cover 700$ a month in Uber driving and what would happen on each path.