There you go, I sold my little car a few days ago. The very one who accompanied me since my arrival in Pays de la Loire a little over 8 years ago. How time passes. But this is not the time for bitterness, quite the contrary. So why did I part with my little self? What elements pushed me to this decision, and what consequences for my daily life? This is what we will see together in the next lines.
My wife and I arrived in the region at the end of 2005. Very quickly, we acquired a small car to simplify our daily lives. Young and childless, the latter was largely sufficient for our needs at the time . And time, as usual, passed. Marriage, child, acquisition of a principal residence, child… No matter the order, elements have come to change, in a good way, our rhythm of life. I invite you to read the About page for more information. In 2012, we then acquired a second vehicle, more family-friendly, to make life easier for our little tribe . And 2 years later, we came to the conclusion that keeping our first small car was a luxury we could do without, especially to optimize our personal finances. Yes, it took us 2 years to reach this conclusion: I understand quickly, but it takes a long time to explain myself… 🙂
Having just one car is nothing new to us. In the past, we have already been in a similar situation and this did not pose any particular problem. So we are not in uncharted territory. Level of life, it should be without impact or almost: we are lucky to have nanny, school and public transport all 3 together within a radius of less than 300 meters. Madam having obtained custody of the family car (you now know who wears the panties with us 🙂), the only somewhat significant change will be for me: I return to public transport , of which I praised the merits and presented the disadvantages there little. This will give me the opportunity to check out a few blogs and such on the way home! And walking a little will do me the greatest good!
Yes, if we separated from our small car, it is above all for economic reasons. We judged that the comfort it brought us did not deserve the price it cost us. But concretely, what are the expected gains ? Until now, 3 items of expenditure were associated with our small car:
As I never took the time to calculate how much the various technical inspections, oil changes and others cost us, I will voluntarily exclude them from my calculations. To give you an idea of what this may correspond to, however, I invite you to consult the article of a colleague on the car budget. Apart from its maintenance, we therefore spent 60€ per month on fuel and 34€ on insurance. That is a total of 94€ of expenses per month .
Switching to public transport is good, but unfortunately it is not (yet?) free. Given my use, the most relevant for me was to take out an annual subscription. Not to mention that it’s very practical: no daily or monthly coupons to buy regularly and then compost, everything happens by direct debit once a month. And I have a single transport card for the whole year, and even the following years. The annual subscription allows unlimited travel on my city’s network for 530€, which is 44.17€ less on the account each month . Which already saves us almost €50 each month, or €600 a year. 600€ which will allow for example to offer a nice little trip to Madame. But shh, don’t tell him anything! 🙂
Good news, I will actually save more than the €50 mentioned. For what? Because as I specified in the article on public transport, my employer pays 50% of my “public transport” expenses . Think about it if you use public transport! So we get the following equation with 1 unknown, where x is the saving I’m going to make each month 🙂:
So in reality, I’m going to save nearly €72 each month, which I would call excellent optimization of his finances! Without forgetting that I do not even count the maintenance of the small car in these figures… Almost €864 in earnings over one year , most certainly more than €1,000 including maintenance: enough to allow me to accompany Madame in his little trip! Yeah, there’s no reason why I can’t take advantage of it 😉
Combined with the 28€ of monthly savings made on the insurance of the family minivan, the monthly gain already amounts to almost 100€; the objective set at the beginning of the year has therefore been exceeded and even almost doubled. But I don’t intend to stop there. Two other avenues are underway to maximize this monthly gain and optimize my finances as much as possible, all without losing quality of life. I’ll talk to you soon…
And you, have you ever considered switching to public transport? Did you take advantage of the 50% paid by your employer?