The Expense Of Driving A Vehicle

Anybody who drives a car knows that the cost is highly expensive these days. Living with your parents and catching public transportation doesn't sound like a bad idea after all ladies, cut him some slack. I have solutions to these kind of problems and I am living proof that this helps. First, let me show you how much money I hemorrhage for my car and what I would be spending if I played by the rules.

   

This is my car 1999 Dodge Intrepid $3000

My car cost me $3000 and I bought it in 2010. It is law that you have to be in possession of license, registration, and car insurance while operating a vehicle. There's no fault insurance and there's full coverage. No fault covers absolutely nothing and full coverage is only for republicans and people with nice enough grandparents to put the car in their name (senior citizen discount). Nobody can afford that shit so lets say I have no fault. I got a free insurance quote yesterday and $210/month seems like the cheapest insurance company nowadays. Okay fine, charge it to the game.

Gas is now 3.89/gal for regular right now. I live 35-45 minutes away from my job and I work 5 days a week. Putting $20 in at a time, driving back forth is 3 times a week. Not even mentioning that my girlfriend stays the exact same distance from my house and any other expedition I need my car for can take money out my pocket too.

Car maintenance is where I spend the most money on my car. Unless you know how to do oil changes yourself (which a lot people do and I don't) you want to spend $45 at a place you trust every 3 months. Warning, oil change companies will deliberately sabotage your car. It has happened to me on more than one occasion. This lead to a broken transmission which cost $950 to repair. Another warning, mechanical car companies are known for this kind of bullshit as well. 6 months later, my transmission went out again. It took 1800 to fix it this time with a different company of course. With all of the unfortunate mishaps of my car, I had to get it towed exactly 4 times. 3 times for $75 and once for $150. 

My first and hopefully last car accident

Since my car has 130K miles on it, I'm pessimistic that there will be future damages that I need a contingency plan for that. Here's an estimate based on how much I spent on my car already including an additional $600 for new used tires, tags, real insurance for a month, headlights, new radiator, oil, anything else I'm missing, $6,955. That's also including the cost of the car and excluding the gas cost. Now, disregarding the cost of my this is what if I was paying for insurance, putting gas in my car 3 times a week, and keeping it up. Alone, that's roughly $7320/year, $610/month, and $122/week. 

Let's assume $7000 is the average of your everyday blue collar worker for the cheapest insurance quote. With the rising cost of rent and overly expensive utility bills, the cost of living independent is not affordable unless you're part of the 1%. Financing or paying a note for a car is not an option and that wont do anything but ruin your credit if you can't pay it off. 

I know I said I had some awesome solution but all I recommend is try moving somewhere close to your job to save money on gas and don't pay for car insurance. The ticket for not having car insurance is only $90 and it beats the hell out of paying $2520 a year. Don't pay off tickets either. That shit is a waste of money and who cares how many points you have on your license? That wont stop me from driving. I never had a license but I've been driving for 4 years. I owe over 5K in tickets but that's another story.