Live where there is great mass transit.

Establish a legal residence where insurance taxes, license and registration are low. This can be quite different than where you spend most of your time.

Obtain a daily driver that is economical on fuel (that might be a scooter or motorcycle if climate is reasonable).

Perform as much of the normal maintenance yourself.

Keep a special use vehicle if desired.

Do what it takes to prevent receiving any traffic tickets or being involved in any vehicle accidents.

Ride a bicycle as much as you can.

Walk everywhere you can.

Yea, live in downtown Paris or NYC. The cost of your house will be millions for a 1,000 sq feet but you can walk everywhere.

No thanks, I prefer to live in an area without mega millions of people smashed all in a small area.

I don't live in such areas either.

I live in a rural area surrounded by National Park land on one side and vineyards as far as the eye can see on the other three sides, 10 minutes walk down a little used road brings me to all of my everyday needs (fresh bread, meat, vegetables, cheese and wine) in a nice listed village (with superb regional bus service). 45 minutes of bicycling or 20 minutes by motor vehicle brings me to a TVG station where I can travel far and wide at 180+ mph (along with my bicycle, 4 hours to Paris, 6 to London). 45 minutes by motor vehicle is a regional airport.

20 minutes away by bicycle are Roman ruins, 10 minutes walk are Medieval buildings by the dozen, within 1 hour drive are over 50 Roman, Greek, Neanderthal, Medieval or Renaissance sites. Hiking, fishing, hunting out my back door. Sailing, canoing within 20 minutes. 20 minutes drive is a regional medical center.

You might benefit from expanding your horizons beyond the stereotypes.

Peter Mayle in the house?

E39 bmw

If you look at it, cars are a freaking rip off. At 15,000 miles and 25 MPG, you're looking at $1800 in fuel costs ($3 a gallon) a year. $3600 for a $300 car payment. $1000 for insurance.

$6400 to drive a car around. That's 20% of an average $32k (after taxes) wage.

I absolutely cannot wait until my Mazda 3 is paid off. No car payment and I'm lowering insurance to the bare minimum. It's going to be my beater for a long time (hopefully).

Well he did say best, but also lowest cost, the E39 only fits one of those. I've got 1 word for you on that lowest cost... Tolga. :D

i've never sold a car for less than i paid for it. even my XJR.....bought it when gas was high in the summer of '08. sold it for $500 more than i paid for it, two years later, with 40K more miles on it.

i bought my airport beater E30 for $400. I'm sure i could get somebody to pay $500 for it. ...and that's after 30K worth of my miles. i think that car is the best $400 i've ever spent. ...heck it's taken me from Indy to Southern California, and it's never had a mechanical problem *knock on wood*

I have met Peter and told him his mystery book sucked. He was pleasant all the same.....................

Peter lives in Provence. I had the good sense to follow in his footsteps.

Glen did they make an El Camino SS in 1986? I have always liked the way the Monte Carlo SS's looked (cue Angela to post a picture of the gorgeous one she redid for her father)...

I also do a lot of the work on my vehicles myself. My airport car now is a 1968 Buick Sport Wagon. Of course it costs me a little bit every mile due to the 400 under the hood, but I'm not putting miles on the other cars, and I smile everytime I drive the grey ghost.

Bill

Easy. Buy a $500 beater that runs but looks like crap and has at least 6 months left on the registration. Don't put it in your name but carry a copy of the bill of sale in the glove compartment just in case. Get the absolute minimum insurance coverage from the cheapest low-life insurance company you can find.
Drive it like you stole it and when it craps out, simply leave it where it broke and walk away and buy another beater.

Not counting gasoline cost, you can keep your automobile ownership costs well under a grand a year.
The onliest problem is you have to drive a POS. I can't stand doing that.

All of you guys are ignoring the cost of fuel. Which could easily be $23,000 over your ownership of the car (100,000 miles / 20 mpg x $4.50 per gal, if gas isn't even higher over the next 5 years). Make that a 35 mpg car, and it is $13,000. Saving $10,000 is a huge factor in getting the lowest total cost, so I'm not sure why "choose a fuel-efficient car" isn't right up near the top of the recommendations.

I save money by driving around in stolen cars for a week or two until the police come and take it back, no problem, I just steal another one.




10 year old Corolla.

Oh, you know what, I should have qualified that a bit. If you are doing it yourself, then by ALL means fix those annoying little things. But if you have to pay someon to search down and fix the dash rattle, they'll usually "sink" you financially before they find it.

And cleaning, again, I agree. Can't stand them dirty, it's gross.

angela

I also have always kept vehicles far too long- to the point where I just keep buying them without getting rid of others, and taking the plates and insurance off the old ones because I do not drive them but I don't have the heart to sell.

Finally sold my 89 Corolla Sport Coupe last year after such a long time with it. I miss it all the time.

I have a 924S in storage because I don't have time or space to have it here in CA, but I don't want to sell it, even though I could literally just sell it and use the money to buy another 944-series car out here.

Someone on this board gave me some good advice for Ferraris, but I think it can apply to any expensive toy car:

Buy it, pay cash, and as soon as you buy it, put it up for sale for exactly what you paid for it or slightly more even. It will take 6 months for someone to finally make a good offer on it, and when they do, take their money and move on. The end result is 6 'free' months of Ferrari ownership- and as long as the service is up to date and nothing breaks in that time, it's 'free'.

My time of saving up large amounts of money to make all-at-once purchases is over. I'm already considering trading up to a newer 911 or Lotus, and paying off the difference- the idea is to keep doing so every few months until I wind up with a nice Turbo or GT3. It does work.

It's like... trading baseball cards as a kid. I remember I started out with a single card once and by the end of that year wound up with a shoebox full.

The biggest flaw in your plan Mike is taxes, specifically sales tax. That will kill you as you continue to move up, having to pay it twice a year. Plating the vehicle as well. I do know that in Colorado you can get a credit if you have time left on the plates, but you don't get a credit on sales tax....

Bill

For me, I would consider the sales tax just like annual cost of ownership and depreciation that I wouldn't normally experience.


I know people who continually buy new vehicles and take huge hits in depreciation and turn around and buy new again 3 years later. Or worse, an idiot girl who buys a car, owns for 6 months, wrecks it, and buys new again, over and over, every year.

That's the wrong way of doing it.

I'll pay the 5-10K in sales tax to avoid paying the 5-10K of depreciation every 6 months on a new one instead.

This logic may be flawed to some but it works for me. It's a principle thing.

Why does paying sales tax on a purchase every year mean that you won't also experience depreciation during the period of ownership?

The SS was only a badge in the late 80s. You could get a V6 with no gages and still have a factory SS. I de-badged mine because I hated to wax around the emblems.

Exactly - using sales tax as an "in lieu of" depreciation (picking your poison) only works if you keep the car. If you do, you pay the tax once and can amortize that over the period of ownership as a rolled-in cost. Depreciation is the gift that keeps on giving (or taking) every single year.

Obviously the rules change a bit if you can justify it as a company expense and write off the depreciation, but that's unusual.