Owning a car isn’t cheap. You can buy a new car and the warranty will cover the expensive repairs, if a day comes when there is a breakdown or a part goes rogue. But then you’ll have all those car payments and the higher insurance rates. Maybe you should just give up all those parking expenses and rising costs and just Uber it for the rest of your life. How would that look?
Giving up the Car for Uber
It is a very attractive idea, isn’t it? Just call Uber, Lyft, or Upshift and they pick you up and drive you around. It’s like you’ve living large like in Driving Miss Daisy. What could be wrong with selling the car and just becoming Miss Daisy?
Well, a lot could be wrong, if you’re trying to save cash by giving up owning your own wheels. Some analysis was done by AAA and they found that giving up your car for ride-sharing is just going to cost you more money than owning your own vehicle.
AAA assumed you’re going to be traveling about 10,841 miles in the year and using a combination of ride sharing and rental cars. That will cost you slightly over $20,000 per year. They assumed a cost average of about $7,300 in costs to own and maintain your own new car with free parking. That’s quite a bit less than hailing a ride-share car.
However, everybody has a different situation. If you take a train or bus to the office, have your meals delivered and work all the time without much of a social life except for going to the beach to help save the occassional beached whale, then you’ll come out way ahead.
So, you’re going to have to sharpen the pencil and do the math. Try getting around with nothing more than ride share and public transportation for a month and see if you could save a bundle without cramping your lifestyle.
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