How many miles are you driving in retirement?

I expect my mileage to go up post retirement. My current 10 year old car has 62K miles on it. But I have a car that I drive for work, I also have fantastic places 20-50 miles from my house that I’m normally limited to visiting less than 2 days a week. I likely will move to somewhere in the 1000-1500 miles a month range from the 500 a month range.
 
In the late 70s and early 80s, I drove 50,000+ miles per year -business/company car. Now I am lucky to hit 8k/year and that's a result of my two homes OH - FL three times per year.
 
I do not know if I had put anything here before....

But I am in the 3K to 5K miles per year now on my car... we put about 12K on DWs.... but since we got a plug in hybrid I am expecting that to go up!!
 
Only drive if I need to as I hate driving in traffic. Also I have no car. Wife has a car and does most of the driving. I’ve driven less than 100 miles so far this year.
 
zangbao said:
Only drive if I need to as I hate driving in traffic. Also I have no car. Wife has a car and does most of the driving. I’ve driven less than 100 miles so far this year.
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I fly a lot further than I drive now of days. What a change from my days on the mainland. I hated flying (not the actual flying - just the rigamarole). So I drove to California from roughly Chicago rather than fly. Now, if I drive further than 23 miles in one direction, I hit an ocean.
 
8000....Back and forth Ohio to Florida three times/year - 1920 round trip; and 2000 miles for local stuff.
 
I drive around 3K miles per year. I live right in town and I’m close to many things. I don’t take driving vacations anymore now that I’m by myself.
 
Teacher Terry said:
I drive around 3K miles per year. I live right in town and I’m close to many things. I don’t take driving vacations anymore now that I’m by myself.
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If you are still interested in such trips, you might try what DW did back when she FIREd (and I was still w*rking). She could always find another lady friend who wanted to go to Florida or Branson or other 3 to 10 day trip with her. They'd split the driving duties and shared the costs.

Just my thinking, but if I lived in Reno, I'd be driving to the California coast or the dozen or so things to do within 200 miles of Reno.

Just a thought! Enjoy.
 
I retired in 2020. Still have the same 4Runner today. My mechanic said my tires will likely rot before wearing out because I drive so few miles. :)
 
Koolau said:
If you are still interested in such trips, you might try what DW did back when she FIREd (and I was still w*rking). She could always find another lady friend who wanted to go to Florida or Branson or other 3 to 10 day trip with her. They'd split the driving duties and shared the costs.

Just my thinking, but if I lived in Reno, I'd be driving to the California coast or the dozen or so things to do within 200 miles of Reno.

Just a thought! Enjoy.
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I appreciate the idea, but I have seen most everything and I have to really want to see something new to incur the expense of a in-house pet sitter.

I had never seen the West Coast until I moved here and have taken many longer trips also. that’s actually why we bought our motorhome so that we could travel for up to a month with our 4 dogs.

However, my daughter-in-law‘s parents are flying in from Poland and we are all going to fly to Las Vegas for a week and that will be fun since I haven’t been there in probably 15 years. There was a period of time where we went frequently. We are also going to go up to Lake Tahoe for four days And I haven’t done that in a while either.
 
there are many days where i don't drive. i have a weekly brewpub meetup. and i have season tickets to the LA galaxy soccer games, but there my neighbor soccer fan always drives. which is fine by me. i do go to a fair number of concerts regularly, but since i use my bike for day-to-day things like the market , going out for coffee, etc. it keeps my mileage pretty low. im lucky that my local area has decent bike paths. otherwise i wouldn't use my bike so often. so less than 10k a year for sure. the amount depends on if a do a longer driving vacations , but i usually keep those under 400 miles one way. other wise i fly.
 
Well, it's been about a month since I bought the new 2025 hybrid....

haven't even hit 200 miles on the odometer....

(do I come close to "winning"?)
 
FI_RElater said:
Well, it's been about a month since I bought the new 2025 hybrid....

haven't even hit 200 miles on the odometer....

(do I come close to "winning"?)
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Yes, a prize will be put in the mail tomorrow!

On another note, the car I bought in February of 2024 just turned 28,000 miles today.
 
FI_RElater said:
Well, it's been about a month since I bought the new 2025 hybrid....

haven't even hit 200 miles on the odometer....

(do I come close to "winning"?)
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Heh, heh, depends on how you define "winning." If you think in terms of your cost per mile on the new vehicle, winning isn't the term I'd use BUT in the how much out of pocket you have spent on transportation, likely you ARE a winner.
 
Beststash said:
“Texas: It's like a whole 'nother country”
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Apparently!

I've only visited Texas a few times, but the word "dystopian" doesn't come to mind when I'm there.

Well, maybe Houston when it rains - a lot! Or Galveston bay in 1947 when The SS Grandcamp's cargo of 2 kilotons of ammonium nitrate detonated in the harbor.

To get an idea what that might look like, here is a Youtube of the explosion of a bit more ammonium nitrate detonating in Beirut. Many more vantage points are available to view the explosion.

2020 beirut explosion - Yahoo Video Search Results

The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.
video.search.yahoo.com video.search.yahoo.com
 
Koolau said:
I fly a lot further than I drive now of days. What a change from my days on the mainland. I hated flying (not the actual flying - just the rigamarole). So I drove to California from roughly Chicago rather than fly. Now, if I drive further than 23 miles in one direction, I hit an ocean.
Click to expand...

I am in a similar situation!
I checked on the Flighty app on my phone and see that I have already flown 34,000 miles this year and expect to fly another 20,000 miles or so (trip to Thailand coming up)
In contrast, I will likely be driving less than 10,000 miles (although I think I should add the thousand miles I drove in Greece earlier this year)
 
Own one car.
When working I drove up to 6k-8k miles a year.
Since retiring in 2020 I drive 100-300 miles a year.
 
About 10K per year. Most of that is from taking trips. On a day to day basis, I drive very little anymore. When I worked, I’d get a 2 year lease and drive 50K miles in that two years. Of course there are road worriers that drive far more. Now though, my driving is very limited because most of what I do is pretty close to home.
 
Beststash said:
“Texas: It's like a whole 'nother country”
Click to expand...
My mental map of Texas is in a real sense, a country allied with the US, rather than a state. I don't think that's too far from the view of many Texans.

While my only trips there (ten or so) have been for business, I've enjoyed those visits.
 
Gonz said:
Own one car.
When working I drove up to 6k-8k miles a year.
Since retiring in 2020 I drive 100-300 miles a year.
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Do you have an alternative transportation system available?

I've mentioned that we have access to good public transportation on Oahu, but we are willing to pay (quite a bit) to own one car for our 3 to 4 thousand miles per year. We COULD use THE BUS but have chosen not to.

I'm thinking with your 100 to 300 miles you could afford to use a cab if it's reasonably convenient. We figure our car costs over $1000/year (not including depreciation) for tags and insurance before we drive the first mile (when consumables and repairs kick in). BUT it's worth it to us to avoid cabs and busses and to have the convenience. So, YMMV.
 
For the past 6 years I have driven 3800 m/yr. My wife has her own car and drives an average of 4300 m/yr.
 
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