Quote Originally Posted by emily_in_nc View Post
If I were to take the bus to work once a week so that he could use my car (a 2004 Honda Element), we could be a one-car family. It's hard to pull the trigger, but something I know we'd feel good about if we can do it!
At the beginning of June 2009, my husband and I decided to see how it would be if we went down to one car. We agreed to park my car in the driveway for a month. I rode my bike or took the bus. I think he might have driven it to work one or two days just to keep the battery charged and such.

We did the one month trial because he was very nervous about going down to one car. Watching it depreciate, unused and unneeded, in the driveway helped him a lot.

I was lazy about cleaning it up for sale, so I didn't get around to selling it until July 17. One year later, I'm so glad that I sold it.

AAA, which by definition is a pro-driving organization, says that here in the US we spend between $7K and $12K per vehicle per year. You can read their detailed report here. After I sold my car, I ran the numbers over the lifetime of that car, and found that my car had cost an average of $8K/year. I owned that car, an Olds Alero, for 9 years and 160K miles. There was almost always something broken or wrong with it. (I got a flat in the first 50 miles on that car!) After I sold it, it was like a big weight lifted off my shoulders.

Not having a second car has put a lot of money back into our annual budget. I do still have *some* transportation cost. I bought and outfitted a touring bike this year, which was not cheap. Riding the bus costs money, and I occasionally rent a car or use the carshare, which also adds up. Also, our insurance bill only went down by about 30% - it turns out that the second-car discount was substantial.

If you're having trouble pulling the trigger, I strongly recommend parking it for some period of time and seeing how you do. Figure out how you are going to handle bulky loads and groceries and how you're going to get to the doctor if you're too sick to ride or stand at the bus stop. Proving to yourself that you don't need the car is very different from thinking that you might be able to get along with out it, and it makes the decision easier.