My car broke down on Tuesday. C went to "rescue" it and bring it to the shop. We have been car-less for 5 days. And it has been nice. It's been no problem.
How did I get to work?
I rode my scooter. If I had someone to watch the little one, I would have ridden the bus or bike/bussed because I'm a little scared to ride my scooter to work because of the traffic. I'm trying to address that problem for next week.
How did C get to work?
He rode his bike.
How did we get the kids to camp? (The two big ones had camp this week)
J rode his bike and N rode the trail-a-bike behind C's bike.
How did I take E to the park?
On the bike with the trailer. It was fun :)
How did we get groceries?
We only had to pick up a few things. We did it on the bike to the Expensive Mart down the street.
C and I had a date night. What did we do?
My MIL took the bus to our house to watch the kids. We rode our bikes to the springs and then downtown to have a nice dinner. We rode about 6 miles total, which helped cancel out the cake I had for dessert :)
We dropped my MIL off at work at 5 am. How did that work?
Normally, we would have driven her. Instead, she rode on the back of the scooter with my husband. They both wore helmets. It was so cute.
Speaking of, my MIL is the best. She's been car-free her WHOLE LIFE. That's right. She doesn't drive. She doesn't own a car. She doesn't even have a driver's license. Sometimes this is a big pain, but usually it is not a problem. Which is kind of surprising considering that she does not really live within easy walking distance of many things. She can walk to the bank and.... that's about it. If she wants to go to the grocery store, she asks someone to take her. If she goes in early to work, (5 am! No bus runs that early) she either calls a cab or gets a ride with a co-worker. For just about everything else, she takes the bus.
My MIL is in her late 50s, so if she can do it, other people can do it. She's in great shape, probably from all the walking to and from the bus stop. She owns her own house on a very moderate income, and I'm pretty sure that if she had the expense of owning and maintaining a car, affording a house would not be a possibility. Plus, she avoids a lot of danger. About 6 or 7 years ago, her kids (C included) tried to teach her to drive. This resulted in 2 accidents: crashing through the garage door and totaling the washer and dryer, and side-swiping an 18 wheeler. I love her, but we're all probably better off with her not driving.
An added advantage to not driving? If you live in Austin (and this probably is true for other places too) you can have the Transportation Fee on your electric bill removed if you don't own a car. Pretty cool.
Showing posts with label tagalong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tagalong. Show all posts
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Baa Baa Black Sheep... Three Bags Full!
Unstuffing status -- three bags full.
Today's stuff includes:
2 pillowcases
2 shirts (mine)
9 pieces of clothing from my youngest daughter
Children's clothes is an area where I have an embarrassment of riches right now. I was going through her clothes and found about 20 pairs of 3T pants. That's probably more pants than anyone, even a toddler, needs. What's funny is that the 9 pieces of clothing don't even include those 20 pairs of pants. Those I will assess another day. I will definitely pare it down, though, as it will cut down on arguments about clothes.
My husband came home today very angry about the car. Not only is it slurping down gas like nobody's business and making a funny sound that will probably cost hundreds of dollars, but my husband got a traffic ticket today. He says he won't be driving to school anymore and took the car key off of his key ring. He had to go back to school and he went on the scooter. An interesting turn of events, considering that I was just blogging about the car.
The current mileage on our car: 96048
Fuel expenses in Feb: 120.25 (15.90 for scooter fuel)
Fuel expenses in March (so far):104.55 (5.76 for scooter fuel)
Obviously fuel expenses are going to be higher in March. We went out of town for spring break, so we used more gas. Still, this shows that we are spending a pretty good chunk of money (although not as much as I had feared) on gas. Add to that repairs, oil changes, insurance, etc. and it's more than I would like.
I used this handy dandy calculator: http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/cost-of-car-ownership.html
According to this, we spend about 248 a month on driving. That's without calculating in the occasional ticket. I did not include car rental in the calculation because I wanted to see what it costs to drive our car. We will still have to rent a car when we go on vacation. For the cost of the car, I put 500 a year, because our car is paid for, but if we paid 4000 and it lasts 8 years, that's 500 a year. That may be wildly optimistic, but the point is that the price per month would not be lower... only higher.
So the only way to decrease the amount we spend on the car is to decrease the amount that we drive. Obviously. I've considered getting rid of the car in the past, but with 3 little kids, getting around can be pretty hard. My oldest can ride his bike for a couple of miles, and my oldest daughter can ride the tag-a-long, but the baby needs to go in the trailer, and the trailer and the tag-a-long don't work together (I've tried... I broke the gears on my bike pulling all the weight) and the girls are really heavy together in the trailer. It works pretty well if we go somewhere as a family because then I can pull the tag-a-long and my husband can pull the trailer. As you can see, it gets complicated. We also need the car to be able to go camping. I love camping.
I think the most realistic (baby step) thing to do about the car for now is to not drive to work. I will commit to that and keep track of mileage on the car for the next week and keep brainstorming.
Today's stuff includes:
2 pillowcases
2 shirts (mine)
9 pieces of clothing from my youngest daughter
Children's clothes is an area where I have an embarrassment of riches right now. I was going through her clothes and found about 20 pairs of 3T pants. That's probably more pants than anyone, even a toddler, needs. What's funny is that the 9 pieces of clothing don't even include those 20 pairs of pants. Those I will assess another day. I will definitely pare it down, though, as it will cut down on arguments about clothes.
My husband came home today very angry about the car. Not only is it slurping down gas like nobody's business and making a funny sound that will probably cost hundreds of dollars, but my husband got a traffic ticket today. He says he won't be driving to school anymore and took the car key off of his key ring. He had to go back to school and he went on the scooter. An interesting turn of events, considering that I was just blogging about the car.
The current mileage on our car: 96048
Fuel expenses in Feb: 120.25 (15.90 for scooter fuel)
Fuel expenses in March (so far):104.55 (5.76 for scooter fuel)
Obviously fuel expenses are going to be higher in March. We went out of town for spring break, so we used more gas. Still, this shows that we are spending a pretty good chunk of money (although not as much as I had feared) on gas. Add to that repairs, oil changes, insurance, etc. and it's more than I would like.
I used this handy dandy calculator: http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/cost-of-car-ownership.html
According to this, we spend about 248 a month on driving. That's without calculating in the occasional ticket. I did not include car rental in the calculation because I wanted to see what it costs to drive our car. We will still have to rent a car when we go on vacation. For the cost of the car, I put 500 a year, because our car is paid for, but if we paid 4000 and it lasts 8 years, that's 500 a year. That may be wildly optimistic, but the point is that the price per month would not be lower... only higher.
So the only way to decrease the amount we spend on the car is to decrease the amount that we drive. Obviously. I've considered getting rid of the car in the past, but with 3 little kids, getting around can be pretty hard. My oldest can ride his bike for a couple of miles, and my oldest daughter can ride the tag-a-long, but the baby needs to go in the trailer, and the trailer and the tag-a-long don't work together (I've tried... I broke the gears on my bike pulling all the weight) and the girls are really heavy together in the trailer. It works pretty well if we go somewhere as a family because then I can pull the tag-a-long and my husband can pull the trailer. As you can see, it gets complicated. We also need the car to be able to go camping. I love camping.
I think the most realistic (baby step) thing to do about the car for now is to not drive to work. I will commit to that and keep track of mileage on the car for the next week and keep brainstorming.
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