Car Mileage after FIRE

[Beryl]

Before retirement - - - 7000 miles/year.
After retirement - - - - 2500 miles/year.

 

[Mulligan]

Before retirement 17,000 miles
After about 11,000 miles
I wonder if the ones posting bigger numbers live in smaller towns and have to travel for their entertainment. If I lived "in the city" I wouldn't be surprised if I was under 3 k a year.

 

[Koolau]

Actually, I thought Nords was saying 30X40 FEET!

Actually, that's just the average lot size in Paradise.

 

[martyp]

I used to commute 48 miles/day before ER. Now I don't but I just put 6000 miles on my car during a road trip to Chicago and back. This is about 1/2 yr of commuting.

 

[MBAustin]

About the same - roughly 10K/year. I was commuting 30 miles R/T 3 or 4 days a week, but now I make a similar trip for volunteer activities at least twice a week, often more. And I have long trips every other month for another volunteer gig. I was surprised that my miles didn't drop off until I really thought about it. Fortunately, I drive a Prius and average well over 50mpg.

 

[Lsbcal]

We now do about 12K miles/year. Mechanic teases me about the low mileage. I tell him I'm saving the oil resources for him.

 

[chinaco]

DW went from about 10k/yr to about 5k/yr. The other 5k/yr was work.

I am tracking my mileage this year. I was driving about 10k/yr also (more or less).

I am excluding any vacation travel miles just to understand our day to day expense.

I suspect that my driving will be in the 3k to 5k range.

I am pretty sure we will substantially reduce our day to day transportation cost.

However, we will probably increase our travel miles that we drive on certain domestic vacations.

 

[jeeper]

I had actual expenses of $531/month in 2010. This year actual is $187, after deducting for several long distance vacations. An unexpected windfall!

 

[chinaco]

I think our fuel savings alone will be around $1500/yr... but fuel is a pure variable cost.

Fortunately, we did not have toll road expenses.

Certain costs are fixed costs or step fixed costs. But I do expect our general maintenance costs to reduce some also... just because of less wear and tear on the vehicles. But I suspect that might be something that diminishes somewhat.

 

[Coolius]

At my last job, daily commute was about 40 miles round trip. As I traveled extensively on business trips, was putting only about 8,000 miles/yr on my car despite the long commute.

Now, we use DW's car for most everything. My car just sits in the garage most of the time. I figure I'll put at most about 2,000 miles on it this year. Probably even less next year.

I was able to get a discount on my insurance, when my car went from work/commute use to leisure only use. It's such an old vehicle that I have only third party coverage on it, so my premium is not too bad.

 

[ER Man]

So higher air mileage after retirement? What if you like to travel by car also or boat?

 

[SteveR]

I think the first couple of years of ER my car went more miles attached to the RV than my driving it. Our long trips have been replaced by much shorter duration ones with an average of 700 miles per trip several times per year instead of 5000-8000 miles per trip.

Some weeks the car sits in the garage for several days without moving. Other days I may put on 80 miles of running around town. My car at 11 years of age is still THE trip car so any non-RV trips we take my car is the horse so the miles add up.

All told I estimate that my current miles per year of actual driving is a tad more since before retirement; mostly due to several 700 mile round trips per year for special doctor appointments and family visits we did not have to do before ER. We also flew more before ER due to time constraints.

 

[samclem]

Our driving went way down after semi-retirement. Two adults, two cars, we put about 5K miles on each last year. We'll probably be taking more long trips this year, but still don't expect to put 10K on any of the cars.

Psychologically, it wasn't easy to buy a new car this year. When you're spending less than 100 hours per year in the thing it hardly seems worth the expense. Still, cars do wear out (or rust away) even if not driven much. I think we'll keep one newer, reliable "trip" car and the other car we'll have will be a beater for local errands, etc. If the thing breaks down on the way to Home Depot, no big deal.

 

[Alan]

Before ER we were both commuting 50 mile round trips to work, after ER we sold one car.

First year in ER we had a couple of long travel trips but still only put 6,000 miles on the car.

This year we have been away without the car, using buses and trains for 7 months, so the mileage will be trivial as we have no car travel planned when we get back for the rest of the year.

 

[samclem]

So higher air mileage after retirement? What if you like to travel by car also or boat?

Then I think you should do that. To preclude the next question: yes, you can also travel by bus or train. Or kayak. Sheesh.

 

[Purron]

For me, it's not so much the quantity of miles driven as the quality of time I spend in the car. Commuting to work was very stressful - traffic jams, aggressive drivers, bad weather, arriving late due to unexpected delays, etc. I used to leave home well before 6am to avoid the worst of rush hour. In the winter, I often drove to and from work in the dark.

Now I can avoid rush hour and if I do get caught up in traffic, no big deal. So what if I'm a little late arriving at Home Depot?