I’ve made two trips on my bicycle so far today — about 10 miles. I went to the farmer’s market at the Battlefield Mall and downtown to my office. According to the information available here, I’ve saved $7.90 already today. That’s because I no longer own and drive a Ford Explorer.
I usually don’t keep track of miles and such, but my wife bought me a computer thingy for my bicycle for Father’s Day.
I’m going to try an experiment. Starting tomorrow I’m going to keep track of my miles. On Fridays I’m going to pay myself by actually transferring the money I’ve saved from my checking account into my savings account.
I know that I’m supposed to be saving money in theory. Now I want to see it.
The Explorer was paid off, so I did not have finance costs. And I only drove it about 5,000 miles per year the last five years — mostly for long trips or trips around town that required its carrying capacity. So, really, the $.79 per mile figure is a bit high for me. I’m going to fudge can call it $.50 per mile.
Let’s see what happens.
Comments 11
This is very cool. I’ll be excited to hear the results of your experiment.
When I use my bike instead of my car, I don’t save nearly so much…firstly, because the car is a little bitty Hyundai (stick shift, no less) and also because it’s still sitting in the driveway, and paid off, so the only expense I’m avoiding is the (tiny) amount of fuel I’d burn by driving. I still have to pay the insurance and any maintenance costs that pop up…
I’ve been talking about getting rid of the car for a year now, but something keeps me from taking that leap…
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:39 am ¶Kelly… You may be surprised what it’s costing you. That site I link to has a custom calculator. Give it a try!
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:45 am ¶Congratulations on losing a car. The money saved will be very rewarding. It is a significant motivator.
I started keeping a log of my monthly miles when I went car-light. See spreadsheet here: link.
I also logged all the times I did drive here: http://www.sheksfootprint.com/car-dependency which helped me decide to go car free.
Also, the monthly cost of your Explorer was as follows:
(Purchase Price – Sale Price + Total maintenance during ownership + total Gas during ownership + Total Insurance paid during ownership)/(months owned).
That is also the money you are saving even if your Explorer was paid off.
I think the AAA averages take that into account. We also commute fewer miles when the luxury of a car is not available. We club together errands, shop smart and change habits that require driving longer distances. For example, I do not visit the Outlet shopping mall after selling my car. It is over 20 miles away. I therefore prefer to calculate my monthly savings, not a per-mile savings.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 12:30 pm ¶Ok, went and looked, and read carefully. I disagree with their methodology in my particular case on a number of counts.
My biggest disagreement with how they calculate this is depreciation. For a paid-off car, the amount paid is a sunk cost and is never recovered no matter how many miles one drives.
Plus, even if you subscribe to the theory, it’s a fixed cost. Fixed costs are fixed, and to amortize them out over the number of miles driven is deceiving. It makes the cost look better the more miles you drive, which is actually the opposite of how we’re trying to get Americans to look at things!
For a ludicrous example, I paid $3000 for my used Hyundai several years ago. If I drove that car only 100 miles I would show a depreciation cost of $30 per mile. If I drove it 10,000 miles I would show a depreciation cost of three cents per mile. Doesn’t recover the cost and doesn’t change the fact that I paid $3,000 for the car.
Insurance–for a paid-for car, I personally carry only liability insurance, so that cost is inflated.
Maintenance–a comprehensive warranty is not something I have purchased for this car, so that cost is inflated in my particular circumstance.
Taxes and Licensing–to some extent, these are also sunk fixed costs, at least until they come due again (the end of the year) and so amortizing them out over mileage presents the same problems that doing it with depreciation does.
I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon, or to dispute the usefulness of the tool. It IS useful, but mostly for people who are more “typical”, i.e. buy a new(ish) car, finance it, trade it in every 3-5 years, and must carry full coverage because they have a loan out on it. That situation just doesn’t apply in my case.
I saw and followed the link on calculating your own driving costs, and may do that, although anymore it takes several weeks to a month to go through an entire tank of gas on this car, so it may take me a while…
I really just should get rid of the damn thing.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 12:42 pm ¶Kelly,
That is the inherent problem with websites that have a one-stop-shop for cost of driving. We really need to do our own math, kinda what you just did.
For your $3000 car example, if you drove only 100 miles a year, it cost you $30 a mile. Getting rid of the car and covering those trips by other means would save you $30 a mile minus the cost of the other means (bus, cab etc). This shows that your savings will be more if you already drive less. This is the reason that I decided to sell my car as owning it did not any more justify the miles driven.
The $3000 is a fixed cost and making it variable does not sound right to me either. However, it provides a quick math to what it costs you in terms most people understand. I doubt everyone who owns a car sits down to calculate how much it actually costs them.
The best case I have seen is with someone who owned a Toyota Avalon for ten years and maintained meticulous records of every expenditure on it. His cost was around $200 a month on that car for every month of the 10 years. His new Honda Civic gets around the same expense on an average. $200 a month does not include insurance.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 1:03 pm ¶Great idea. Last winter when my feet were getting cold every day while riding I used my “savings” and bought winter cycling shoes. I didn’t actually sit down and calculate what I’m saving but did quick calcs in my head and was able to justify my purchase as a reward. Cycling to and from work and for errands is a win-win…I just wish more folks could see that.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 1:29 pm ¶The other thing you’ve got to factor in is the amount you spend on bike related stuff. I’m hard on equipment and break or wear out a lot of things. In addition, most of you probably don’t wear a lot of cycling specific clothes, but I do and that stuff is expensive!
Because I’ve still got two vehicles at the house, I calculated once that it still costs me to ride my bike, even though I commute on it the biggest part of the time! That’s not a problem for me, because I consider it “my hobby”, and in the long run it’s probably cheaper than fishing and hunting or any of those other things people fill their lives with.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 1:34 pm ¶I’m sure you’ll save. Cars MURDER you. A friend of mine lives in Providence and we have the same kind of commute, but his monthly expenses are more than 400 dollars less than mine owing to transportation costs, ugh! He has a system, I do not.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 1:57 pm ¶Tracy -
I’m not sure that you are giving bicycling a fair shake when it comes to cost. You could also buy nascar firesuit and other official driving gear to drive your car. Someone would never count that as driving expenses.
I bicycle in regular clothes and spend some extra money on reliable equipment that has greatly lowered my cost per mile.
I purchased schwalbe marathon plus tires that have not punctured and still have lots of tread after 6,000 miles.
My rohloff hub eliminated any maintenance of the drive train. It does require an oil change every 3,000 miles but my LBS is doing it for free.
Its been 11 months and 4,000 miles since I have spent any money to operate my bicycle with the exception of food.
I do not count food because I think I would just be a butterball like the average American rather than eat less if I did not bike.
For the record I have NO automobile ownership expenses!! I do rent about 9 times per year (more than I used to) at the cost of about 750 dollars. That is $62 per month but I always drive a brand new clean car.
When I do rent a car I have a long trip to make so its actually a very cheap way to drive. I probably average 400-500 hundred miles each trip. That would make it 17 cents per mile. Not counting gas but counting insurance.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 3:27 pm ¶Robert,
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 10:06 pm ¶What city do you live car-free in?
Columbia, Missouri.
I do live part-time (sort of) in Chicago Illinois and find it very easy to live car free there as well.
You are punished financially for owning a car there simply because of the market value of parking. Its around $30.00 per day to park where my chicago apartment is.
Monthly parking is over $300.00 at the building.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 3:27 pm ¶