The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on their odometer every year1. In the past year (Jan 13, 2009 to Jan 19 2010) I’ve put 16,244 miles on the tC. I know the exact number, because for the past year I’ve been using an iPhone app called Road Trip Lite to track my fuel economy and since this marks the roughly one year anniversary of very diligent tracking I thought I would celebrate by both purchasing the full version of the app (here) and disclosing some fun stats and extrapolations.
First off, some fun stats. In the past year, I’ve been pretty consistent on my fuel economy, which was the main purpose of this data gathering, as you can see from the graph below I sit right at about 25 MPG. For the sake of comparison the EPA rating of the ’05 Scion tC was 23/30 (city/highway) so I’m smack where I expect to be. Its hard to tell from the graph, but a close inspection shows an increase in fuel economy when I moved downtown in September.
Putting some of that into real dollars and useless ratios; I’ve pumped 655.65 gallons of gas in the last year at an average price of $2.686 per gallon for a sum total of $1,761.04. A little more number crunching and it looks like I spend a little under five bucks a day on gas, or more precisely I burn a little under $0.11 per mile, at 65 miles per hour that’s $7.15 per hour.
As interesting as it is (or isn’t) those numbers doesn’t really paint a full picture of the cost of owning and operating a car, there’s also the considerations of loan payments, insurance, maintenance and repairs to consider. Thanks to the miracle that is Mint.com, I can get those costs, and even put them in a fancy pie chart for your eye balls:
The small discrepancy between what Mint has for my fuel spending and what I’ve tracked is due mostly to using cash for fill-ups, I’ll be using my actual cost from the previous section for number crunching. The number for Service & Parts is also misleading; I put new rubber on the tC in January 2008 and it was no small expense ($837 for all four ties, mounted and balanced). Since I’m replacing the tires again in the next few weeks, I can conveniently say that the tires are an additional $418 per year.
So total cost for the year period (actually, its 372 days) is roughly $7,600 to own and operate my car. Going back through some of the previous calculations that’s $20 per day, or $0.47 per mile I drive.
So what’s the point? Why take such a close look at spending on one item? Truth be told, I did it mostly because I like working the numbers, but it really does give me an insight into some of my spending and points out the areas that can be trimmed to help save money.
There is no responsible way to reduce my auto payment short of selling the car and my auto insurance has actually gone down recently. Fuel, as well, isn’t really in my control other than keeping my foot free of lead.
What I can control then, should be rather obvious. Parking in the garage downtown is convenient, but at $100 per month its just not worth it. I’ve found that with my typical work schedule I can easily find parking on the street and at worst spend a buck on a parking meter (but usually I’m home well after 6pm). I already do all my own maintenance so I save a bucket load of money, but this tire situation is way out of control. Stock tires would be at least half the cost per year, saving me about $200 per year.
The final word? Park on the street, and get back on stock wheels and I’ll save myself $1,400 per year on auto expenses. Just one more way to get where I want to be financially. Better yet, if I could find a way to ditch the car completely …
