Sell my car? A moment of clarity?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sell my car? A moment of clarity?
14
Wed, 10-05-2005 - 6:14pm

I posted this on an organic gardening board, and it occurred to me that you wise folks might be interested in, and have excellent insights on the topic as well. So here it is:

So I've been doing a lot of listening lately, listening for god, listening for light, listening for the universe. Listening for clarity. I'm pretty good at talking, and decent at thinking, but I'm pretty bum on listening. So I'm working on it.

As I was driving across town to buy the special raw diet that my cat eats, I got stuck in a bit of traffic and began musing on something I had heard about how traffic was never going to get better, that the best we could hope for was to keep catching back up with new construction. And the thought popped into my head: "Get off the wheel." As I thought it, I was directing it at other people, and I began thinking about what that would look like. What if *everyone* got off the wheel. They all sold their houses and cars, moved close to their work, starting riding bicycles and using public transport.

It was pretty appealing, and then I realized that I was sitting in traffic having these thoughts, and why the heck wasn't I getting off the wheel?

So I began thinking about what *that* would look like. We're already somewhat close to dh's work, but I already live at my office. So why do I still own a car?

Here are the reasons:
It's convenient. I can run out and do errands, meet friends, take the kids places whenever I want to.

I occasionally need to meet clients away from my office.

We use my car for long trips, which dh's car is not suitable for.

That's about it.

My life without a car would look something like this:
Dh would work from home one day a week (feasible for him).

On that day, I would run errands with the kids and meet clients when necessary.

If I needed to meet someone during the week on a different day, I would drive dh to work, but this would happen only rarely, once a month at the most.

I would pull the kids in the wagon to the library for an outing (bicycling there isn't feasible--we did it once, and it was quite treacherous because I have to ride on the side of a very narrow, very busy road, and the kids were just in this flimsy little bicycle trailer with semis roaring by inches away... not safe, not okay, so I ended up pushing the bicycle in the grass nearly all the way--in the wagon we could walk in the grass more easily--still noisy and not a great solution, but probably doable; I'd have to install seatbelts for peace of mind, to be sure they wouldn't step out of the wagon into the busy street on a whim while my back is turned pulling); or we would ride the bicycle to a park, which has a nice safe route through neighborhoods from here; or just walk to our community pond and woods.

We would take the bus for long trips (once per quarter, approx) at a cost of about $300 for the four of us. Not having my car would save us over $500 a month, so this would not be a major expense in the big scheme of things.

We would be completely debt free in about six months (otherwise our debt-free date is not quite two years out).

We would be living a slightly greener lifestyle, striving toward our smaller footprint on the earth.

Can I convince dh? Not sure. Am I completely convinced myself? Not sure.

What do you think?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Thu, 10-06-2005 - 2:01pm

We are a onecar family (no kids, though), and we are thinking about selling our one car and becoming a no car family. (Until we get out of debt). The one car thing worked really well for us, because we live in a city that has pretty good public transit. I don't drive... I can, but I don't, unless I have a lot of groceries.

The only thing we really needed the car for was to visit with our parents, who live 30 - 45 minutes away by car. On public transit, his parents take 3 hours to get to, mine take 1hr to get to. We also used the car to go on trips, but since we can't afford those anyway...

We are having a one month test period. SO far we have used the car three times, one of which was to take the car in to be fixed, so only two count.

Your errand sharing idea sounds great! My friends and I try to do that, but it turns into a social thing - we all go!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 10-06-2005 - 2:08pm

That's a terrific idea to "test-drive" the one-car situation. I'm going to run it by dh, and see if we can't do that starting on Sunday. I can plan out the week ahead of time, he can decide what day he'll stay home from work, and we can go from there.

Thanks!!

Heather

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 10-06-2005 - 2:11pm

Thank you so much for the info on FlexCar--I'm going to look into that for our area. That sounds like a really good deal. $9 an hour might seem like a lot, but if I use it even every week (which is not likely to happen) for an afternoon (4 hours), that's still only $144 a month--way lower than the more than $500 a month we spend on car payment, insurance, maintenance, etc. And I'm highly unlikely to use it that much, since I'll have dh's car once a week as well. But it would be good for peace of mind, in case of emergencies or a "I just have to" situation.

Thanks! And, it's great to hear that you're doing it and doing just fine.

Blessings,

Heather

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 10-06-2005 - 2:15pm

Wow--a no-car family! Now THAT's radical! LOL

We would have similar issues when we wanted to go see dh's best friend about two hours away. But we could rent a car for about $60 for the weekend, and since we only do it once every few months, it's still a far better deal than owning a car. Same thing goes for visiting dh's parents five hours away.

I can see the errand-running turning into social hour--which would be fun! Unfortunately, most of us have kids, so we wouldn't all be able to fit into the same car :(. But, even just sharing the errands should help us all.

Thanks so much for your input. Let us hear how your ongoing no-car experiment goes.

Blessings,

Heather

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