cycling to have new car

[mustang1]

Buy the most powerful gas guzzler you can get. You'll find you won't drive it much because you'll be worried about fuel cost then alternative transport such as bikes will come more easily.

 

[mustang1]

Mr Money Mustache's thoughts on motoring and cars are closely alighed with my own. An itneresting read:

"When it comes to the Automobile, you really have a choice between two possible relationships.

You can be the Master, and thoughtfully use cars as a tool as needed to reach your goals. Or you can be a Slave to the auto – worshiping it, allowing it to steal your money, your physical fitness, and your sense of control over your life.

The Master sees the Auto for what it really is: A very elaborate and heavy gas-powered wheelchair. There is no shame in using a wheelchair to get around if you need one. But it’s obviously counterproductive to do so when you don’t. So the Master chooses the most efficient model he can find, keeps it in good condition and uses it only when necessary.

The Slave finds the very definition of the Master to be insulting. “I need my car!”, “And maintaining a certain image is important in my lifestyle and profession!”

So he buys wheelchairs so expensive that he has to borrow money from a bank for them, and so enormous and complex that the ongoing fuel and maintenance costs are more than what he even manages to put into long-term investments each month.

Slaves make up the overwhelming majority of auto users here in the United States. Our irrational habit of spending virtually all of our income on the constant driving of cars we can’t afford is so common that people offer only a speechless dull stare if you mention you don’t do the same thing yourself.

So until recently, I thought I was doing pretty well in the auto department because I get plenty of blank stares. Walking my son to the school in the morning, we notice the zoo-like roads from the comfort of our powerful sidewalk. Junior office workers swipe on smartphones while idling in BMW M3s. Teachers on $45,000 salaries show up at school in $42,000 Honda Pilots. Young fathers rip the breathable air to shreds as they spool up the turbos in their jacked up Diesel farm trucks after dropping off a 60-pound child.

Meanwhile, my car and van sit in the driveway waiting for the monthly trip to another city or a haul of building materials, burning just a few tanks of gas per year. It’s a complete luxury that I even own these things, but at least the cost is kept down to a reasonable percentage of my income: a hundred or two bucks of fuel, $400 of insurance and registration, and under $1000 of combined depreciation and maintenance per year.

When you compare this spending of $1500 per year with the average two-car family’s spending of over $9000 and assume I invest the surplus, after 10 years you end up with a wealth difference of $104,751.

That’s 104 grand. Every. Ten. Years. Just by having slightly less new (and slightly more efficient) cars and being slightly less ridiculous about the amount of Car Clown driving we do"

OK, it's dollars and all, but the principle holds true. A very interesting website to browse if you get some time.

Wheelchair? Like the one in Johnny English.

 

[mustang1]

I've some close up first hand experience. My ex Missus is a director for a large electronics firm and earned easily 4 times as much as I did, and likely much more. Unfortunately, due to her Porsche 911 habit, and several foreign holidays a year habit she'll be working into her 60's. She could have quit in her 40's if she'd lived a more modest life.

You're right, many folk aren't so lucky and find it very tight. Which makes it all the more remarkable that so many of them saddle themselves with finance or PCP's to acquire cars they can't afford. The whole object of such finance and schemes is to sell people products they can't actually afford, and every year several million Britons fall for it.

When these PCP schemes first came out (or at least when I first heard of them), I thought they were a good deal because you only paid for the depreciation of the car plus an admin fee and some profit for the dealer. Therefore, since a £20k BMW 318 cost the same as a top-of-range Ford Sierra/Mondeo but lost less in depreciation, so a PCP 318 would cost less than a PCP Mondeo .

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Consumers = suckers

 

[mustang1]

The main reason I'm not retiring in five months' time is that the Government upped the minimum age to 55 for drawing a private pension!

I had no idea . I thought you could retire whenever you liked .

 

[mustang1]

I'd be quite happy with a small van, kitted out for the bike, led lights in rear for a service area. Nope, missus won't let me. Not having a van on the drive.

I agree with her. A VAN????

 

[mustang1]

There are loads of folk who do it. Our neighbours both have top spec Merc A class and a 1 series BMW. Both very new, and both leased most likely. They live in a 2 bed terrace. See many folk with cars way better than their house.

But the cost of getting a nicer house is so much more than getting your pleasures with new cars now. They might think by the time they can afford a nicer house, the prices would have gone even further up and thy will be old and not have enjoyed life, so they bought cars.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I'd be quite happy with a small van, kitted out for the bike, led lights in rear for a service area. Nope, missus won't let me. Not having a van on the drive.

This must be a cultural thing I've forgotten...

 

[night cycler]

I've done the opposite. Gone for the most microscopic, least polluting car I could manage in the name of minimising the damage im personally doing to the planet. I've just had the green light from Mrs D to get a new electric Smart, so the petrol one will go in the new year.

And you know what? I haven't had so much fun with my clothes on. It's so terrifying it's hilarious.

Is it a 3 wheeler

 

[cyberknight]

The elephant in the room is not vehicle emissions or how high we have the thermostat, but the one thing politicians and eco warriors never mention because they know what it would bring down upon their heads.

You could cut all greenhouse gasses by 20% tomorrow and ultimately it would make bugger all difference because in the not too distant future the population of the planet will have increased by that and more anyway - with everyone wanting the goods and comforts those of us in the west take for granted. There are simply too many of us and the only way to reduce that number is to have severe restrictions on the number of children people are allowed to produce. Of course that won't happen because of the "Infringement on people's God given right" to have as many as they want, but we can't complain about using the planets resources and polluting the atmosphere while there are so many of us and the number is continually expanding.

If that ever happens it will be when it is probably too late - even the Chinese couldn't manage it with a government that brokers no dissent from it's citizens.

I've thought for a long time there ought to be a 1 for 1 on children, you are only allowed to have one to replace yourself, once that has happened you then are sterilised. So for instance a couple get married, they have a child, as part of the split one of them has to decide who the child replaces, then that person cannot have another with anybody else, unless the new partner hasn't a child already. Very draconian but necessary.

What we need then is Ras Al Ghul

 

[screenman]

How much energy could we save if the internet was only used for important things? at what point does saving the planet begin and end?

 

[Deleted member 26715]

What we need then is Ras Al Ghul

I don't see the relevance?

 

[mustang1]

There are a few posts here which go along the lines of people not being able to afford the cars. But the very fact that they have a monthly payment shows that they are affording the car. If I go for a 10 mile walk every day and someone tells me I can't walk 10 miles.... well... err. I can, and I'm doing it. Same thing with the payments if someone says you can't afford it, and the driver is paying the monthly amount, then they are affording it.

 

[fossyant]

I agree with her. A VAN????

For the bike - nice cheap 'iccle' van for use at weekends for the MTB. Mobile service area ?

 

[fossyant]

[QUOTE 5441445, member: 9609"]van bike and led lights - i'm livin the dream
View attachment 438700 [/QUOTE]

Jealous moi.....

 

[Andy in Germany]

There are a few posts here which go along the lines of people not being able to afford the cars. But the very fact that they have a monthly payment shows that they are affording the car. If I go for a 10 mile walk every day and someone tells me I can't walk 10 miles.... well... err. I can, and I'm doing it. Same thing with the payments if someone says you can't afford it, and the driver is paying the monthly amount, then they are affording it.

Trouble is that it comes at the expense of something else which you can't always afford. I know at least one person stuck because she has to drive to work, so she has to have a car, she can only afford a clunker that costs a lot to keep up to German standard roadworthiness. To pay for this clunker she has to work long hours in a job she doesn't really like, so she's away from her family longer than she wants to be.

She's working to earn enough money to run a car to get to work, and paying for it in time lost with the people she cares about, and you don't get that back, ever.

And even then society as a whole is picking up the incidental costs, which we as a society can't afford.