This is just something I've noticed crop up a lot in this sub, including on multiple threads that I've read today, so I thought it was worth addressing. It will often be a budgeting thread, and almost always at least 2-3 people pipe up "sell your car. Take public transport or do rideshares, or buy a bike. Walk places."
And I really want to impress on people that you are coming from a place of ENORMOUS privilege (I call it 'city blinkers', because these are often people whose perspectives are skewed by the fact that they live in or around cities with robust public transportation systems) if you live in a location where that is a viable option for you. The majority of America (and I'm going to use the US, since this is largely a US-focused sub) does not have access to reliable and accessible public transportation, and the ability to catch a rideshare like Uber or Lyft is extremely limited. The majority of America is suburbs and rural areas where selling your car is not a legitimate option for the vast majority of people.
For example: me. I live in a town of about 4,000 people. It's 10 miles one way via the highway to the nearest Walmart for me; I commute half an hour down an interstate and up a mountain to work every day. I can walk around town for exercise and conversation and I have a bike that I ride around just for fun, but the majority of things that I need to get to are too far away to get to by walking or by bike (or are too dangerous to get to on foot, as it often involves going down highways and crossing the interstate). Even when my family lived in the suburbs, it was a similar issue. We don't have buses, we don't have taxis, and we don't have reliable rideshare options; options for Uber and Lyft are basically non-existent. They're around in the nearest city (>30 minutes away), but not in our outlying towns.
Even if you do live in a place where public transportation is a thing or a place that is safe to ride a bike or walk in, there are a variety of reasons why you can't or don't want to get rid of your car: maybe you have physical issues that make it difficult for you to walk/bike places. Maybe you can't carry your groceries home on your bike, or maybe the trip without your car is so long that your cold things melt/go bad by the time you get home. Maybe you need to have a car so you can make trips somewhere else (visiting family regularly, doctor's visits, etc). Maybe your commute is too far to walk/bike, or maybe it's not near a bus/metro route. Maybe you're responsible for making sure the carpool happens and your friends/family get to work/school. Whatever the reason, there are a thousand completely valid reasons not to get rid of your car unless you live in like...downtown Manhattan or LA.
This is not to say that advice about decreasing transportation costs is bad! I'm just here to remind everyone that if your first advice to someone is "get rid of your car" without carefully evaluating the many reasons people can, should, and do own cars, you're doing it wrong. Financial advice is not just "sell everything you own and live as a pauper," y'all. There are a lot of complex calculations that go into what a solid financial plan looks like for someone, and in the vast majority of cases...none of those calculations include selling their car as a viable option. Switching insurance, yes. Working to pay off car loans or get a better interest rate on their loan, yes. Putting a plan together for regular maintenance so as to decrease deferred maintenance costs, carpooling and decreasing the amount of superfluous driving you do, searching around for cheaper gas stations, or buying a cheaper/more fuel-efficient car...yes. All of these things are valid. But for a lot of people, they need a car, and it's important for everyone on this sub to realize that.
Submitted May 15, 2019 at 10:48PM by erissays http://bit.ly/2Jo788p
