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Totally fair. And I love road trips. If I could do more, I would. However: 1. I don't own a car. 2. When I've rented cars, it's cost me ~$100 USD a day. I nor

Totally fair. And I love road trips. If I could do more, I would. However: 1. I don't own a car. 2. When I've rented cars, it's cost me ~$100 USD a day. I normally travel for anywhere from two days to a month at a time. On average, probably a week to a week and a half. So then this quickly becomes a very, very expensive trip - ~$700 to $1000 USD compared to $300 to $500 USD for a flight. On top of that, I travel an average of once or twice a month. So car rentals are simply out of the question for me for most trips. 3. I live in Boston, but places I've visited in the last year include New York, Rochester, Vancouver, Lincoln (Nebraska), Montreal, Las Vegas, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Doha, and Reykjavik. It's simply impractical (if not impossible) to drive to most of those places from Boston. The three that are manageable are New York, Rochester, and Montreal (and I did do the Boston to Rochester and back drive in a rental instead of flying twice). I've considered purchasing a car explicitly so that I'd be able to travel without flying a little more, but leasing is impractical due to limits on miles per year and I'm not ready to outright purchase a car. Either way, a car would come with additional costs (the cost of the car, maintenance, parking, etc.) and wouldn't be able to replace even ~15% of my flights, so I think it's just impractical for me at this point of time.

ryanhuff 10y ago
At $100/day, you must be renting premium vehicles. Last week, I rented a "standard-size" car for a business trip (Saturday pick-up, Wednesday return). It was about $150 total.
- citruspi 10y ago
  Nope. That's what happens when you're under 25 (or in my case for one of the trips, under 21) and you need to purchase insurance and all the other fancy stuff and then also pay fees for convention center surcharges, airport surcharges, etc. I've got one receipt[0] on hand for $202.98 for 1 day. I've also reserved a car for four days (4th to the 7th) for around $130 but when I picked it up, I ended up paying $450+ after insurance and the toll device was added on. The device was required because the state I live in (Massachusetts) has removed toll booths, so you can't pay by coins/cash. I was required to pay a fixed fee per day for four days for the device, despite the fact that I actually only drove on two days. The fee includes unlimited charges, so it might have made sense if I was on the highway everyday, but I was not. The frustrating thing is that there's a lot of rental companies where you'll make the reservation for like $130 and they don't tell you how much insurance and the other stuff costs because it's different in each location. So you don't know you're getting fucked until you're signing the paper at the pick up area and it's too late. If I'd known it was going to be $450+, I'd have just booked a flight in the first place. [0]: http://imgur.com/a/UmkcI http://imgur.com/a/UmkcI Edit: And then if you're wondering why I didn't just switch to two one-day car rentals instead of one four-day rental to avoid paying for insurance, the toll device, etc. for the two days I wasn't driving, it's because then the price goes up significantly because it's a one way car rental - see[0].

ryanhuff 10y ago

At $100/day, you must be renting premium vehicles. Last week, I rented a "standard-size" car for a business trip (Saturday pick-up, Wednesday return). It was about $150 total.

citruspi 10y ago
Nope. That's what happens when you're under 25 (or in my case for one of the trips, under 21) and you need to purchase insurance and all the other fancy stuff and then also pay fees for convention center surcharges, airport surcharges, etc. I've got one receipt[0] on hand for $202.98 for 1 day. I've also reserved a car for four days (4th to the 7th) for around $130 but when I picked it up, I ended up paying $450+ after insurance and the toll device was added on. The device was required because the state I live in (Massachusetts) has removed toll booths, so you can't pay by coins/cash. I was required to pay a fixed fee per day for four days for the device, despite the fact that I actually only drove on two days. The fee includes unlimited charges, so it might have made sense if I was on the highway everyday, but I was not. The frustrating thing is that there's a lot of rental companies where you'll make the reservation for like $130 and they don't tell you how much insurance and the other stuff costs because it's different in each location. So you don't know you're getting fucked until you're signing the paper at the pick up area and it's too late. If I'd known it was going to be $450+, I'd have just booked a flight in the first place. [0]: http://imgur.com/a/UmkcI http://imgur.com/a/UmkcI Edit: And then if you're wondering why I didn't just switch to two one-day car rentals instead of one four-day rental to avoid paying for insurance, the toll device, etc. for the two days I wasn't driving, it's because then the price goes up significantly because it's a one way car rental - see[0].