The one-car family
It may be difficult but the financial advantages can be profound
After paying the home loan every month, for many the next-biggest expense is the car repayments (which include insurance and running costs, regular petrol and the less frequent expenditure on tyres and services).
For a family it is most often two cars, meaning double the expense. However, repeated research shows that on average a car is actually being used only about 5% of the time.
For the other 95% it is sitting parked, costing us money but not giving us any utility. So is it possible to reduce this cost by becoming a one-car family?
My wife and I sold our second car five years ago and now operate as a one-car family sharing the car between us, using Uber when we both need to be somewhere, assuming one can’t drop the other at their destination.
But for us it is easier as we have no children and we mostly work from home. When we do have to be at work we both have very short journeys of less than 10km, so Uber is cheap.
But recently I met a couple with children who both need to go to the office every day — yet they’ve been a one-car family for the past three years. Clearly, it’s not always easy, but it has saved them a ton of money: by their estimates, about R2,000 a month.
In their case the husband catches a lift to work every day with a colleague who lives about 10 minutes away. So the morning run includes dropping the children at school, then the husband at his colleague’s place, and finally the wife heads off to work with the car.
It can also be vastly improved depending on where you live. I am spending a couple of weeks in Cape Town and staying in Green Point. Walking (sometimes a 20-minute walk) or catching a MyCiti bus or Uber means I haven’t bothered with a rental car at all. I am not only saving a fair bit of money, but the walking is undoubtedly good for me. And yes, I know it’s summer and winter will make that 20minute walk a whole different story — but I do own a quality raincoat.
This then raises the question of where we live. When buying a house or apartment we usually consider issues such as schools for the children, proximity to work and the suburb we want to live in. But shouldn’t we also consider the ability to be a one-car family?
For many being a one-car family is out of the question. But the bigger issue is that we should often challenge and revisit our assumptions. If not about how many cars, what about where we live and other big expenses we take for granted that maybe we could change and improve our finances?
This includes the renting vs buying debate I wrote about two weeks ago. Change is often hard but, equally, often very rewarding.