A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about being a one car household in the rural countryside. I never thought I’d recieve so many comments about how having one car to share between two working adults just isn’t feasible when there isn’t access to public transportation. I guess I didn’t make the point of that post clear enough:

Having one car to share between two working adults who must both commute to work is entirely doable. Even without public transportation.

Let me repeat that: There is absolutely no public transportation to be had in my rural community, yet my fiance and I still manage to make it work, day in and day out. Some days it’s annoying, but most days it’s not. In fact, most days I thank my lucky stars that we’ve made it work with one car, because cars are freaking expensive. Having one is bad enough, two would set me back on my debt free journey significantly.

Now, we both live way beyond walking distance to our respective workplaces, so we’ve had to resort to some pretty creative ways of getting around. Here are a few:

Biking

I live eight kilometres from work, and while I ran that distance a few times while training for my 10k road race last spring, it’s a bit far (not to mention hilly) to bike. I work in an office without a shower so showing up all sweaty from an invigorating bike ride wouldn’t be the best strategy to get ahead in my workplace. My fiance, on the other hand, only lives 1.6km from a coworker, so on the days when I don’t drop him off in the morning, he bikes up there and hitches a ride into work.

Scooting

While we haven’t purchased one yet, I would absolutely love to have a scooter. Fuel efficient, affordable, and perfect for driving alone, I’ve been drooling over a scooter for awhile. Living in a rural community and being so damn far from everything, a regular bike isn’t really the best option for getting around, but a scooter? Count me in! In my last post on this topic, some of the readers mentioned not being able to convince their husbands to give up the second car, maybe floating the idea of replacing it with a motorcycle will sweeten the deal?

Carpooling

My fiance and I carpool almost everyday, whether it’s me driving him to work, or him taking the car and dropping me off at work before taking off to do his thing (he’s an entrepreneur so his work hours and location are more erratic), we always make sure to coordinate our schedules. Beyond that, I often carpool to work with my own colleagues (one of whom lives around the corner from my house for part of the year), and he with his. Sometimes I worry that my coworkers might get annoyed with this, so I always make sure to offer to pay my fair share of the fuel costs, and I’m always prompt and ready at the designated pick up and drop off times.

Coordinating Work Hours

I work a typical 8-5 day, and in the summer so does my fiance. His business is seasonal, however, and in the winter he often finds extra work to keep busy. Since we only have one car, and the nearest city (read: source of jobs) is 30km away, he makes sure to only apply for positions with hours that won’t conflict with mine.

Working from Home

Finally, I’ve worked hard to show my employer the value of having me work from home. Having the flexibility to be able to stay home and work on my laptop allows me to forego having to arrange transportation completely for the day. I can just sit back on my couch in my pyjamas and not have to worry. Working from home has the added benefit of not having to navigate the treacherous winter road conditions that are often present in my rural community during the colder months – having two cars is expensive, but so is going off the road!

It’s Doable, You Just Have to Want It

Having one car in a rural area with no public transportation isn’t an ideal situation. In fact, attempting it with two working adults and children would probably be downright impossible, but as young professionals without children, we’ve found ways to avoid the ridiculous costs that come along with owning a second vehicle. I’ve actually discovered some hidden benefits including improved communication with each other and a better relationship with neighbours and coworkers. I’m serious about getting out of debt and that means eliminating every single unnecessary expense in order to throw more money at debt. A second car is unnecessary to us, and not having one has helped me pay off almost $13,000 of debt in ten months.

What huge expenses did you think were totally necessary only to find out you could live without them?

Hey everyone! I want to introduce my new staff writer, Jordann. She will be helping me out and posting every Friday most likely. I love her writing so I’m glad she decided to join me on my blog. You can visit her at My Alternate Life. I’ll let her take it away now.

Growing up in a rural area, I was used to needing a  car to get anywhere. With no public transit whatsoever, and the nearest city 30 kilometres away, most families had two to three vehicles (read further on the most gas guzzling cities!). One for mom, one for Dad, and an old beater for the teenaged kids to fight over. Heck, the average Dad usually had his own personal car as a hobby that he only drove on Sundays in the summer.

Cars, in my neck of the woods, weren’t an option, they were a necessity.

This was, I thought, how most people lived. That is, until I moved to a city center for University. You mean to tell me that people don’t have cars here? This was a revelation to me. To be able to not just get around comfortably, but often more easily without a car, was a novel concept to me. I lived four years in University without ever owning a car, and even though I had access to one, I didn’t use it. Transit was the way to go, or good old fashioned walking.

Then, one fateful day the summer after I’d graduated University, I totalled my then-boyfriend-now-fiance’s trusty neon. We were moving back into rural country shortly, and the demise of his vehicle meant that a car payment was soon to grace our finances. We had no choice, we were moving to a rural area, we needed a car.

Let me tell you, after 21 years of not having to deal with a car payment, insurance payments, gas and maintenance costs, having a car has been nothing but an unwelcome expense. Sure, where we live right now, we need a car, but that doesn’t mean I like owning one. I guess it’s because I’ve never owned a car, but I’m the complete opposite of desensitized to that payment. The idea of having not one but two cars to spend money on? No thank you.

A Necessity, Or Just Convenient?

Where I’m currently living, I live eight kilometres away from work. My fiance’s job requires him to travel between 30 and 50 kilometres per day to different job sites. In our surrounding area there’s nothing but residential housing and farms. No public transportation to be had for miles around.

Yet we only have one car. Sure, it can be annoying at times, but not nearly as annoying as the cost of an extra car payment, insurance, gas and maintenance. We have to be more coordinated, my fiance car pools with a nearby fellow employee, or when he needs the vehicle he drops me at work early, or picks me up late.

We can’t go separate places at the same time without coordinating first, and we get very good at planning our errands to coincide with the other’s obligations (he gets groceries while I’m at my photography class, etc).

Having a single car is completely doable, and we don’t even live anywhere with access to transit!

Downsizing to a One Car Family to Cut Expenses

On the average month, not including maintenance fees (since those pop up sporadically), I spend around $440 per month of our 2007 VW golf. If we were to add a second car to our household tomorrow, we’d probably look for the same type of vehicle: used but in good condition, compact and good on gas.

So, theoretically, if we were to be a two car household, our automotive expenses would cost us around $880 per month exclusive of maintenance fees.

That’s a ton of money! An extra car would run us around $5280 per year! That’s a very good chunk of income. I can’t help but think that extra $440 could be put to better use, like saving up for a house down payment, putting towards retirement, or paying off the remaining $25,000 in debt I’m trying to get rid of.

No, for now I think I’ll deal with the minor inconvenience of being a single car household in a rural area, and put that money towards paying off debt instead. Things might change once I have kids, or maybe when I allow some lifestyle inflation creep, but for now I’m happy with my relative lack of mobility.

Are you a two car household? Do you think you could downsize to a single car?