What I learned by not owning a car for 30 Years

I’ve saved over $500,000 for starters.

I haven’t owned a car since my senior year of high school in 1983. I didn’t need a car at University and instead used the Greyhound bus and hitch hiking as well as the good old-fashioned ride share board to go back and forth between home and university.

I moved to Japan in 1988 and because of the ease of public transportation, being able to bike to the train station every day, and the fact that I was too lazy to drive in a place where it is routine to spend an hour getting into a parking garage, I avoided the joys of car ownership from 1988 until today.

More importantly, in Japan companies pay for public transportation. So I didn’t pay a cent for public transportation in all the time I lived in Japan to get to work. Subsidizing public transportation and making it financially attractive is the single most important way of getting riders to a critical mass.

Because I have never owned a car, I haven’t replaced it seven times or spent any money on tires, oil changes or brake alignment. Think of all the time I saved by not driving to and from the auto mechanics. All the uncomfortable conversations about choices between replacing the part or replacing the car.

I looked at the Edmunds to see what the cost of car ownership would be. You should check it out too. A $25,000 used Buick would end up costing $44,000 over five years time. That is a lot of wasted time as well. You need to also calculate the value of your time and how much time you spend on your car. Washing it, waiting for someone to fix it, waiting in parking lots for parking, the time you spend filling out forms, yada yada. Not owning something saves you time and money. If you make $25 an hour and you spend 10 hours a month on your car, that is an extra $15,000 over five years. So your 25,000 car ends up costing you $69,000 over five years time or $13,800 a year. That is a lot of bus rides. It is also two nice holidays a year.

Public Transportation Enabled My Sloth

I don’t need to go into how great the trains and buses are in Japan, but they run on time. Even the buses. Imagine buses running to a printed schedule, and you being able to count on the printed times. It is an…