Comments on: Trip to the Market

By: Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › An hour a day

Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › An hour a day — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:26:02 +0000

[...] did a posting a few years ago about car costs. At the time time gas was 27% of the over all expense, and for example, depreciation was 25%. [...]

By: Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › Cost of that Car

Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › Cost of that Car — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:32:39 +0000

[...] just sold a car I bought back in Sept. of 2003. Back in 2005 I wrote a posting attempting to estimate the cost of owning a car. At the time my estimate was $12.65/day or 42 cents per [...]

By: Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm › Close monitoring, profiling, and sin taxes

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:46:40 +0000

[...] a day! Here in Boston, a bus/subway transit pass costs a bit less than $2/day. My somewhat dated estimate of the cost of car ownership was $13/day, of which $1.25 was insurance. Of course that $7 is at the margin and the insurance [...]

By: Momo Jeng

Momo Jeng — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 15:20:27 +0000

You’re overestimating the cost of a trip to Haymarket by including normal costs of owning a car. You have to pay insurance on your car each day, regardless of whether you make a trip to Haymarket that day. Similiarly, you say that you include the Kelley Blue Book depreciation from the increased age of the car, but that depreciation occurs even if the car is sitting in your garage. Your calculations only make sense if the only reason you have your car is to make the trips to Haymarket. But if you were going to keep your car, but take the bus to Haymarket, you’d still have to pay the insurance, and your car would still depreciate. What you’re really calculating is the average cost per mile of owning a car, not the average cost per mile of an additional trip to Haymarket.

By: Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Misc Links etc.

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:32:45 +0000

[...] the national weather service? They Rule! A nice complement to my attempt to estimate the cost/mile of driving the car; here’s an attempt to estimate cost/mile of sh [...]

By: Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Highway User Cost

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:04:30 +0000

[...] is about 12 miles long. About 200 thousand cars make the trip every day. Cars cost about 50 cents a mile for their owners. So we can just multiply to get the cost to own [...]

By: Mark Denovich

Mark Denovich — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 17:49:25 +0000

Damn! My last comment timed out, and I lost the contents… *sigh* Let’s try again:

The newest vehicles in my fleet were only added this year. I like letting someone else take the depreciation hit (I paid $8k for the Lexus… it was $52k new.) It is liberating owning cars that you can afford to have stolen or otherwise destroyed. I don’t have to freak out about every scratch or ding.

Owning several cars also allows me to own specialist vehicles. I can avoid the trap of trying to find that one car that does everything (generally poorly.) It’s also like having a RAID array… I’m never without wheels and I can wait to work on a car until it fits my schedule.

More on TCO: AAA publishes a cost/mile for owning a sample of new domestic (and therefore comparitively cheap) vehicles. Their 2005 results are here: http://www.aaasouth.com/acs_news/Drivec05.asp and that’s using 2004 gas prices ($2/gal.) The depreciation figures are over 5 years. $8.17/day depreciation just to own a Cavalier. Wow.

By: Ben Hyde

Ben Hyde — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 19:20:02 +0000

… ok I revisited the depreciation and increased the maintainance some.

By: Ben Hyde

Ben Hyde — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:31:43 +0000

Mark – Glad to see yu don’t own any newer cars.

Along with reading I’ve always considers the fun of observing my fellow man as on the plus side of public transit.

Your certainly right about the maintainance.

I looked up the car on kbb.com, and got a price and then repeated adding a 1000 miles. So it maybe low because I didn’t also add a year.

I should probably redo both those. …

By: Mark Denovich

Mark Denovich — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:43:16 +0000

Not having to deal with the “public” that rides on public transportation: priceless.

BTW: How are you calculating your depreciation figures? Car depreciation is far from linear, and has a lot of variability based on brand/model/style/age/condition. I think for most people buying new cars, they are paying a lot more than $3/day.

I think your maintenance number is a bit low too… $550/yr should cover consumables (tires, belts, filters, fluids other than fuel) and the labor to replace them, but I doubt it would cover anything that actually needs to be repaired. I generally advise a $1000/yr as a rule of thumb. Some years you’ll get by cheaper, some years you won’t.

my fleet:
95 Lexus SC400
97 Dodge Dakota
88 Alfa Romeo Milano Verde
86 Alfa Romeo Spider
99 Triumph Daytona (955cc sportbike.)
2001 Bajaj Chetak (150cc scooter.)