Hardly drive but would owning a car be the best option given my circumstances?

kazwookie

Do online shopping and get it delivered.

Get the bus / walk to the shops and get a taxi back.

Sell the car

Lurker1

MichaelMoneySaver said:

How about an e-bike? I converted my pedal bike with a Chinese kit at a cost of about £600 all in. This allowed me to do my hilly 10 mile commute (each way) in under 20 minutes. Recently I had to buy a car when my commute increased to 35 miles. 

Oh I will need to look into e-bike. Just wondering how much would it cost to get a battery replaced? I have searched online but it is US based or there is not a definitive answer to this.

Lurker1

theoretica said:

Worth running the calculation on taxis too - especially if you walk or bus to the shops and just taxi back.

Silly as it sounds but I never even had taxi in my mind because previously to where I stayed it was extortionate but I will look into this especially if I am doing a big shop then taxi would be better than a bus!

maisie_cat

We only use our car twice a week as a rule but wouldn't dream of getting rid of it. It's bought and paid for and costs circa £500 a year in tax/ins/servicing plus petrol.
Recently we've twice had to do a 600 mile round trip to FIL but until then hadn't gone further than 30 miles for nearly 2 years.
We are on a bus route but the stop is 1/2 mile away along a fast road without pavement so we don't use the bus.
As we age we may well have to give up driving at which point we'll use taxis.
My sister gave up her car years ago and hires one a few times a year.

Lurker1

zagfles said:

What about grocery delivery services? Or walking to a more local shop and getting a taxi back if you can't carry the groceries? Even if you have to use a more expensive local shop it would likely be nowhere near as expensive as the extra cost of a car.

If you only meet up with friends "once in a blue moon" then you could get a taxi, or walk if you're able, can you not do an occasional 30 min walk to the train station? I walk an hour+ most days just for exercise.

I sound annoying but I prefer picking my own groceries out especially for fresh and chilled food. But that definitely sounds better to walk then take a taxi back if I have too much groceries.

I would not have minded the walk to the train station but the area I need to walk to get to is a "rough" area and in the past I encountered one unpleasant experience which has put me off a bit so I would rather not walk it.

Herzlos

Lurker1 said:

Herzlos said:

I think you need to calculate exactly how much car ownership is costing you, and figure out how much it'd cost to replace the car with walking and taxis.

Remember that if the train station is a 30 minute walk, that it's probably a 10 minute cycle at most. You shouldn't have any issues taking a folding bike on the train either as they are pretty small even when not folded. I did that for a while before working from home.

You can get a decent folding bike from Decathlon for about £200.

Hiring a car sounds like a good idea on the face of it, IF it's easy enough to get to the hire car. It sounds like you're out of the city so it's not likely you'll have a car club handy (where you can rent a car by the hour).

It is quite hard to calculate especially now that my car seems to fail MOT each year and work is needed to be done which can be cheap to costly to fix. I guess the reason why I had these thoughts is because it feels keeping my car will be way too much hassle as time goes on with the amount of problems that may arise. I never thought about a folding bike but that does sound better than trying to cycle all the way. Car hiring option would not be feasible since the closest to me is hiring a van and thats about £100 a day.

Yeah it's hard to factor in things that are hard to calculate, but even if you took the average cost to get through an MOT.
But if you factor in the tax, MOT cost + a guess at repairs, insurance, servicing, fuel.

The value of the car is also sort of relevant from an opportunity cost. It's not quite a monthly depreciation but assuming it's worth more than scrap it's worth considering what else you could do with that money.

Van hire is usually much more expensive than car hire. Here I can hire a van for about £100/day and a car for as low as £14/day, but the car rental place is about 15 miles away so I'd need to cycle for an hour, or catch a train and walk/cycle another 2 miles or so.
Fine if I'm using it for a few days but it's just not viable for a trip to Ikea for example.

born_again

Any car clubs in the area?

Cost of car is easy
Yearly you have: VED, Insurance, Servicing & MOT (not any repairs) & petrol. If you know how much you have spent on repairs over the last couple of years you could add that in as well on a yearly basis.