this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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I drive my car to work so I can afford a car so I can drive to work so I can afford a car
I got a shiny car. I like shiny things lol. That's all it's got going for it. I would rather be drunk on a train haha
I believe 20% of household spending in the US was for cars. So people could seriously work a day less every week, if they got rid of their car.
Really I wish I could live without one. Ive decided on harm reduction instead.
I learned something weird about cars and money and such just this last week. I got tired of working on a truck just to spend more money dumping fuel in it, and I took what I considered the nuclear option. I traded the truck in. On a used 2nd generation Nissan Leaf.
The car wasn't expensive. I could easily afford it. But as I was working on the required financial gymnastics to fit a car payment in my budget, I saw that the truck has been using $200 of gas every month. And the auto insurance dropped by about $100 each month. The car payment is $200. It costs something like 70 cents to charge it after my commute.
The silly car isn't cheap. It's free. And its so quiet and smooth, no wonder people get evangelical about their EV's.
If you don't count maintenance and insurance, parking, etc. Add those and it's once again expensive.
I don't understand your argument.
The truck I traded in had those same costs
And it got 15 mpg.
And the tires cost more.
And the insurance was twice as expensive.
And it needed oil changes
And it needed transmission fluid changes.
Sure its more expensive than owning no car at all. Owning no car at all just isn't an option for a lot of people in the US. So instead of spending money on tires/brakes/insurance/fuel/oil/fluids/tires for an F150, I'm paying for tires/insurance for a dorky little EV. And I have an extra ~$400 in my budget.
Have you looked at a depreciation curve? For newish vehicles, the biggest "expense" is depreciation. Its higher for luxury cars and EVs than trucks.
The car is not free. The car is still expensive. Even if it is a necessary expense. Even if it's cheaper than the truck.
So its hair splitting then.
No, it's talking about how cars are expensive, not free.
Budget wise the Nissan was free to change to, compared to his old truck, for Mr. CADmonkey
This reminds me of when my parents made me get a job to pay for auto insurance at 16, though I didn't have a car or plan to get one right away. Their rates would go way up unless I had a separate plan, so I had to get one. And then I needed to get a car to get to a job, so I had to spend everything I had saved up as a kid to get a barely functioning car and insure it. I will say that it was sadly a good intro into life as soon to be adult in America.
That's nearly a line in Metric - Handshake
There’s also some great movies about American poverty, and it feels like there’s always a scene where car trouble of some kind tips their life into an immediate downward spiral. They need it to get to work to sustain everything else, making one traffic stop the moment of despair.
The one I really appreciated, as heart wrenching as it was, is called Straw.
The worst part is that scenario you mention is a real thing that can happen and does happen to a lot of people in the US. You should see some of the cars in my deep red no-vehicle-inspection state. I once witnessed a car running on four donut spares, one headlight, and one taillight. And probably no insurance. The alternative is possibly losing a job and becoming homeless.
This is why rednecks are always shadetree mechanics of some stripe or another. Me too. I grew up poor, so I got real good at working on cars.
Too real. Barely avoided that trap once myself.