Saturday, July 12, 2008

Commercials

So yesterday as hubby and I were driving home from the bookstore I heard a minivan commercial where they were offering $10,000 back from the purchase. 10K! They also mention how that buys a lot of gas (a lot of car comercials mention money back and gas these days). So I did a little math in my head of how much I spend on gas, and how long 10K would last for gas. I used to spend $200 a month, it's now about $250, that's $2400 to $3000 per annum, so 3 to 4 years and I've spent 10K on gas (holy cr**!) so I figure a minivan uses more gas, so a tank in a minivan should take me as far as a tank in my car. The tank size of the minivan is 60% larger than my car, so I should be spending 60% more on gas i.e. $3800 to $4800 or take between 2 to 2.5 years to spend $10K on gas! I tell you, I wanted to get rid of my car immediately, take into account that between parking, gas, repairs and insurance, I'm spending currently $7000 per year maintaining the vehicle. So I looked up bus fare, in 2 cities since we're considering moving. Current city it's $175 + $38 = $213 (or $2556 per year) target city is $109 (or $1308 per year). Even if I add another 2K per year for taxis, I'm still saving at least $2k in either city over using the car. Dang I want to chuck the car bad, it's just so darn convenient in my current city at least, I'll have to make a list of what I want to be near if we move into our target city.

1 comment:

mom of 2 said...

I'm with you on chucking the car, but where we live there isn't any public transportation. I am driving a Honda Civic though, which I absolutely love, and it gets awesome gas mileage, which right now I love even more! Good luck with a new (or no) car/van and the possible move!