Carfree in the Country

[miss_thenorth]

I am 3 miniutes outside of a small village, that has essentilly nothing in it. 15 minutes to two different towns, and 20 minutes to a small city. I usually drive once a week to either a town or city to pick up groceries, animal feed etc. Hubby commutes 50 minutes to work. There is no bus service and a taxi would have to come from the city.

We have a 96 Ford diesel pick up, and a 95 jetta diesel. The jetta is for commuting, and if at home, I use it for my outings, if Idon't need the truck for feed etc.

We would be lost without one or the other. We could essentially live with one vehicle, but the truck is too fuel hungry for commuting, and the jetta won;'t do it for when we need a truck. Our hobbies are horses, and quads, and we have to trailer them alot- so we need the truck.

Not to mention, like already mentioned, appointments, emergencies etc, it is nice to have another vehicle there when you need it.

Owning a vehicle does not have to cost alot of money. Our jetta cost us $1500, and the pick up $3000. Since we have no loan payments on them, we only need liability insurance. which is $700/year/vehicle.
Hubby does all maintenence/repairs on the vehicles.

When we lived up north, we survived for years with just one vehicle. I could walk or bike anywhere, even with the kids. and if I needed the car, I would wait until hubby was off work. There was a taxi company in that town, but no bussing. But it was a small town, and if you wanted to go clothes shopping, the nearest city was an hour away.

I think if you lived in a city where there was everything you needed in a reachable distance, and your bus system was great, then it is doable, but I can't see it being an option if you are out in the country. JMO.

 

[Denim Deb]

denim,
my dads a motorcycle rider and im a scoot girl...
and my dad says riding my 50cc scooter is actually MORE exciting than riding a motorcycle...he says it feels alot faster than it actually is lol.

All the scooters I've seen that are 50 ccs have a top speed of 35 mph. That's fine if you're staying in city limits, but if you have a speed limit of 50, you can run into trouble.

 

[Leta]

miss_thenorth, you are driving my dream cars. Unfortunately, those cars here would be VERY expensive. Even since Canada's dollar hit parity with the U.S.'s dollar, Canadian cars are still cheaper. People in the Eastern half of the U.P. frequently go to the Ontario side of the Soo to buy cars. People here in the west end go to Green Bay, sometimes even Chicago.

We found a 1990 TDI Jetta at the reputable used car lot here. It had about 100,000 miles on it, which isn't much for a diesel. They wanted $4700 for it. The Blue Book price was $1900. I called them up, basically to say, "Really? $2800 over Blue Book, REALLY?" but it had already sold! They had it four days, and it was gone.

This was less than two weeks ago.

We will never have a car that we have to have collision insurance on. We made that decision a long time ago. Our credit union doesn't make you carry collision on car loans if the loan is under $3000 *and* the car is over seven years old. The last car loan we got was at 3.47% interest for a year, which means we paid a whopping $68 in interest, so we are not worried about the cost of the car itself, it's just everything. Cheap car + insurance + gas + registration + maintenance + repairs. It's about equal to what we pay for housing (mortgage + utilities + taxes + insurance), but the house will be paid off in four years (knock wood) and with cars there's just no end in sight. You never really get a car paid off, because before you know it you need a new one.

I really want trains to come back. Sigh.