After much consideration I have decided to get rid of my car. My plan is to get rid of it after my last final for the semester in early December. Next semester I’ll only have class on Monday afternoons. That is the only place I’ll really need to go. I’ll be relying on public transportation to get there and anywhere else I want to go. Since I’m living with my GF I should be able to combine any trip I need to make with our other trips. I’ve been reluctant to give up my car because I haven’t wanted to get up early twice a week to take the bus to school. Now that I will only have to take the bus once a week and not have to get up early to catch it I don’t have much excuse for not getting rid of my car.
I’m not sure whether I’ll sell my car or donate it. My plan is to try to sell it for a low price and if it doesn’t sell then I’ll go ahead and donate it. Since I won’t make enough money to itemize I won’t get any benefit from donating the car but I’d still like to see it go to a good cause.
Getting rid of the car won’t save me a lot of money because it has been paid off for a long time and I don’t drive much anyway. I’ll save $20 a month on car insurance and and another $40 or so in gas and some more from not having to make repairs or pay taxes and registration. I will have to pay for bus fare and I might have to pay something to be added as a driver to my GF’s insurance although I will rarely be driving her car. My net savings should be somewhere around $60 a month.
Even if I get nothing for this car my cost per mile based on my purchase price alone is less than two cents per mile. I bought this car cheap and put over 90,000 miles on it. I didn’t keep complete records of my repair, maintenance, gasoline and other costs so I can’t figure my total cost per mile. I am sure that it was much lower than average though. Someone buying an average priced new car would still have a higher cost per mile than me even if they put a million miles on their car. I definitely received good value out of the purchase of this car.