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‘I can’t move my car’: Americans struggle as vehicle expenses rise
- robthebrew 5y agoUSA discovers what Europe have dealt with forever. I am aware of the huge size of the USA (and Canada, the number 2 contender for highest annual milage), but the black-gold rush wasn't going to last forever. It amazes me that even excluding cross country or even out of town visits is almost impossible without a car in the US.
- 999900000999 5y agoEven when times are good, cars are what largely keep Americans poor. Back when I lived in LA, I literally had a car salesman try to tell me I should be okay with an outrageous interest rate, because everyone can just refinance later. There is an intense amount of pressure to not only own a car, but to buy a nice car so you can show off. For one, you're not going to attract quality people like that, and two the moment things go bad you'll lose that car. I was able to reduce my monthly expenses by about 20% just by going car free, and I refuse to ever own a car again. Owning a car is just this giant liability, but of course I'm rather limited in where I can live because of that. Much of America is just broken, there's no way to fix poverty as cars will keep you poor. You have a tiny handful of cities which both have decent public transit and are moderately affordable. One of these cities starts with a C.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThere's pressure to over-spend on everything. HN will justify it for some classes of products and complain about it for others. The one guy who moves heaven and earth to live in a "good neighborhood" that's normally a tad much for his income would get accolades around here. The guy who lives in a trailer park but and expends the same effort to drive a nice car gets derided. I don't see the big difference between them. They're both just going "all in" in different aspects of their lives.
- 999900000999 5y agoTry selling a house 10 years after you buy it. Then sell a car 10 years after you buy it. One goes up in value, often greatly, the other is nearly worthless.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>One goes up in value, often greatly, the other is nearly worthless. The Toyota fanboys would take issue with that statement ;) Personally owning and maintaining my own metal box on wheels saves me ~2hr per day over the publicly owned metal box on wheels. Even in Europe that would be worth it for just about any white collar professional. Not everything has to be a good investment. I drive junk but I understand why some people would rather sit in a really, really nice car for their commute. The way I see it transportation is just the cost of having a job. "Base" transportation has zero residual value. You can't sell a worn out shitbox for anything. You also can't sell a city bus or rail car at all. If you throw more money on top of the "base" A to B car in order to have something nice then you might get some value back but it's fundamentally a luxury expense. For my use case and for many people, the "base" car offers so much utility improvement over anything else that it's a) a no brainier b) basically pays for itself vs attaining equivalent standard of living without it.
- iancmceachern 5y agoThey're usually tied together. Quite often it's the car that allows the person to buy a home and commute to and from work to this home. The car is very much a tool. It it frees up time (which can be traded for money), or otherwise opens up opportunities (like to live in a suburb and commute to work rather than taking public transportation which may be nonexistent or otherwise time inefficient) then it's an investment as well - it just returns its value not in money or intrinsic value of the car but in saved time, effort, and doors opened. Not everything should be viewed as a financial instrument only. Say a musician buys a trumpet, and 20 years later that trumpet has depreciated. The argument could be made that if he bought a house instead of a trumpet it would have been a much better investment. But how would he have played the trumpet his whole life then?
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- maxsilver 5y ago> cars are what largely keep Americans poor. Which is weird, because (until last year anyway, when used car pricing went crazy) cars were by-far the cheapest major expense an average American has. Most Americans drive, in large part because the car is free money -- the drastic housing savings and occupational/educational/commercial opportunities more than make up for the small amount of cash it costs to own and operate one. Just on rent savings alone, my car pays me to drive it. (The car costs me about $400/month in full TCO, but that car easily saves me $800/month or more just on rent alone, not to mention trips or kids school runs or visiting friends or shopping or so on). And that's not even factoring in that people's time has value, and any alternative form of transit easily double-to-triples the amount of time a given trip takes. > I was able to reduce my monthly expenses by about 20% just by going car free, and I refuse to ever own a car again. That sounds nice, and maybe it's just the midwest in me, but I've never seen a person who can actually save money by not-owning a car. Many people claim as such, but then you dig a little and find out they were already wealthy to begin with, which is the only way they were able to get away with it. (e.g., "you should totally sell your ~$20k car, and with the money you save, you could totally move your family into a $600k-more-expensive half-the-size downtown condo and go car-free. You can just pay a small $50/trip for an Uber whenever you really need that car" -- like, it sounds nice, but the math here doesn't check out at all).
- fomine3 5y agoFrom what I see on here, I feel car insurance is crazy expensive in the US. I don't know why, maybe same reason as lack of public healthcare?
- gr1zzlybe4r 5y agoCheck out the numbers in Chicago - neighborhoods like Avondale, Rogers Park, Uptown, etc. The tradeoff is definitely worth it.
- HWR_14 5y agoI mean, the math totally checks out if you can afford the real estate investment. And I mean that both in terms of assets and willingness/desire to take on the risk associated with real estate in [area]. Well, it checks out depending on the assumed return of the real estate vs. other investments.
- pengaru 5y agoTaking loans to finance a lifestyle well beyond your means is orthogonal to car ownership. Used cars in the US are cheap, and outside the rust belt are also perfectly fine. I've owned something like a dozen used cars in my life, most cost very little to own and operate, some even made profit when I sold them after fixing something obvious like a rotten ground connection. Through those years I learned how to repair and maintain the things which are marketable in-demand skills ensuring I'll never be unable to earn money - quite the opposite of keeping me poor. Don't blame cars for stupid people making stupid choices.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoFrom what I've seen, used cars haven't been as close to a good value in the US over the last 2 years. It takes a lot of years of depreciation to get a price significantly better than a new car, and if you drop $10k on a ten year old Honda Civic you'll miss out on a decade of fuel efficiency improvements, safety features, etc.
- pengaru 5y ago> you'll miss out on a decade of fuel efficiency improvements, safety features, etc. So... those who can't afford the ideal miss out on things? [obvious]
- Rebelgecko 5y agoI think it's another instance of the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice. Someone who can't afford a new car saves 30% by buying a decade old one. Except that old car is less efficient so they're buying 5-10% more for gas than if they had a new car. If you need a loan, interest rates are higher for used cars. The tires are crappy so they're spending $500 to replace them. The car has 100,000 miles on it so parts are worn down. Maybe you get really unlucky, and get in an accident that would've been prevented by a blind spot monitor or a backup camera. Maybe you get in an accident that would've happened regardless, but the older car doesn't prevent injuries that a newer model would've protected you from.
- HWR_14 5y agoSome people overspend a lot on cars. Some people don't. I know a lot of people who drove 10+ year old Toyotas until they decided they wanted an electric car. Or who still drive 10+ year old Toyotas. Interestingly, some bought the car new and had a "drive it into the ground" mentality. Others bought them used. In both cases, their TCO for their cars averaged out to be quite low. Even the people who bought new EVs seemed to get fairly good deals on interest rates. If you were getting high interest rates, you were probably trying to buy far too much car for yourself.
- dangus 5y agoAnd, before people start saying "you don't understand, America is so big, we need cars," well, that's only true when you're talking about farmers and rural residents. In reality, most Americans live in cities and suburbs, concentrated on the costs and in the Midwest, with urbanization only increasing over time. In other words, most people in the US already live in areas where there is sufficient density and short enough distances to live in a place where maybe you need to own a car but you shouldn't necessarily need to use the car for every type of trip. There are suburban designs emphasizing single family homes that can still accommodate a lifestyle that isn't using a car for every type of trip, but North America has simply not developed that way. Development in North America goes wildly beyond just accommodating cars, it instead actively designs in hostility toward pedestrians, cyclists, and generally having the chance of using anything but a car for getting around. Features like: - Winding suburban developments separate themselves from the main street grid to eliminate thru traffic, but that also makes walking/cycling out of the development impractical by extending travel distance - Stroads [1] and big box developments make it unsafe/impossible/impractical to walk to businesses that are right next door or otherwise in the same development, never mind crossing the actual street. - Transit system design and schedules that emphasize downtown travel during bankers hours. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...
- dabbledash 5y agoI don’t know about needing, but the only place I actually preferred not owning a car was NYC, and I wouldn’t want to live there now that I have kids. I think a lot of people just prefer to live in their own house with their own yard where they can’t hear their neighbors. And those people prefer to travel in private transport that can hold a few kids and is protected from the weather.
- dangus 5y agoI agree with that sentiment, but I think you can have your own space and the conveniences of the suburbs and also live in a suburb where you don't need your car for every trip. Regarding yards and noise: you can have a yard and a garage and a separated house without having winding suburban sub-developments that chop off walking access to businesses and attractions. In my opinion, the best kind of suburban neighborhoods are connected to the normal street grid. Instead of depending on the elimination of thru traffic to keep the street quiet, the street design itself calms traffic (relatively narrow streets, frequent stop signs, and street-parked cars naturally slow traffic to around 25mph). A great example is Lakewood, Ohio. It's an inner-ring suburb with a diverse set of income levels where most kids walk or bike to school [1]. You can take a Bus Rapid Transit service or train to downtown. Families that live there generally own two cars and a detached home just like the deeply car-dependent suburbs, and they'd probably drive to the grocery store and often drive to work, but people there don't need to use their car for every single activity like going out to restaurants, bars, parks, school, etc. There are also a number of apartment complexes, duplexes, and quad-plexes that provide a diverse housing stock, so it's not just a single family home suburb (enforced by restrictive zoning) where a specific type of homeowner is catered to. [1] https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-lakewood-ohio-walking-school.html https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-lakewood-ohio-walking-...
- gamechangr 5y agono one I know is concerned about gas prices. Yes, occasionally there is a joke about it costing as much as it does in Europe, but no one I know has changed even little habits. My teenagers still drive around the city needlessly with their friends. My brother still drives 30 minutes away to his "favorite bbq place".
- teakettle42 5y agoThis is just a political advocacy piece, not actual news. Gas prices aren’t even that high — just higher than they’ve been for a few years.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoIn Canada, fuel prices are way higher than they've ever been. For years, diesel hovered around 110¢/L. then in late 2020 it plummeted to around 85 because of Covid before rising to 140 for the past year or so. But last week it jumped to 225, and it's still at 210. I have never seen it above 150 before last week.
- dangus 5y agoI agree, gas prices are this huge political indicator that isn't quite as impactful as the media makes it out to be. I wouldn't discount the fact that gas prices affect the poorest people the most, especially since location compromise is how many people save money on housing. Still, gas is only one component of the total cost of driving. Adjusted for inflation, the current price of gas is on the high side, but on the other hand it's been a downright bargain since the end of the Great Recession. Once you adjust for both inflation and higher average MPG of typical Americans' cars, I highly doubt that we're paying the most we've ever paid for gas. On top of that, the most popular cars in America are crossover SUVs, and while they're much more fuel efficient than the old SUVs of the mid-2000's, they still sacrifice about 5 MPG or more from their sedan equivalent. I don't believe that Americans are making "sacrifices" while huge automakers like Ford and GM are completely discontinuing sedans from their lineups in favor of SUVs that categorically get worse MPG due to their inherent aerodynamic disadvantages. Americans have apparently made the choice to not make MPG their top priority for purchase decisions despite living through high gas prices barely more than 10 years ago. In other words, the most economic cars sold in America (cars like the Nissan Versa and Mitsubishi Mirage) are also some of the most fuel efficient. The people who own crossover SUVs and have 2 kids or less really have no room to be moaning about gas prices, as they made a conscious choice to waste fuel in exchange for "convenience" or "driving posture."
- robotcookies 5y agoThe focus should be on walkable communities. Biking and transit help but they are not good solutions for elderly or people trying to commute reliably. EVs are still bad for the environment. Walking is free and simultaneously helps reduce health issues like obesity. I get irked when articles like this barely discuss walking.
- windex 5y agoAmerica still has cheap gas and taxes in comparison to many places in SE Asia. If you factor in real wages, direct and indirect taxes and the lack of social security nets, I guess places like India etc would look real expensive.
- AniseAbyss 5y agoCompared to my country America is almost giving away fuel for free. But the distances are insane, somehow it is normal to live 50 miles from your job. That offsets the cheap gas prices.
- Proven 5y ago