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Our Second Car

April 13th, 2014 at 04:54 pm

When we were first married, and until our daughter was about 2, we only had one car. My husband likes having two cars, and I wish we only had one. Most days we take just one car (I drop him off at work and then pick him up later.

Here is the breakdown on costs of having a second car (these costs are yearly estimates):

- Car 1 (VW GTI - husband's car) - total $1470-1870 per year
registration - $50
gas - $500-900
service - $350
insurance - $570

- Car 2 (Nissan Versa - my car) - total $1338-1758
registration - $37
gas - $420-840
service - $225
insurance - $656

So first of all it's interesting to me that overall the cars cost almost exactly the same amount to run. It's about $125 a month each or $250 for both; actual total for the past year was $233, so pretty accurate.

I think a savings of $125 per month (or $1500 per year) is a lot! D doesn't think it's that much.

Since tracking and spreadsheets are what I love to do, I am going to do a spreadsheet of how many miles we actually drive each week, and see how much they cost to drive per mile. I know this is slightly ridiculous, but it gives me something else to track.

And, just as a side note, D promised that when one of these cars is too old and eventually is destined for the junkyard, we will have just one car after that. So I'm pretty happy. They are both pretty newish (2007 an 2008) so it'll be a while, but I can wait.

2 Responses to “Our Second Car”

  1. rob62521 Says:
    1397419608

    It sounds like you do well just using one car. I'm not sure at this point it would work for us.

  2. snafu Says:
    1397478491

    I suggest you consider suspending insurance for one of the cars next winter from 1st real snow until Apr. 1. You can always re-instate insurance if you find it too inconvenient to use just one car. It just takes a phone call, no big hassle. We've told them to credit the a/c, as we'll re-instate when the weather is more moderate. I track how much I miss my car during winter.

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