Weighing it all up

We have worked out it costs us around $6837 per year to own and operate our vehicle. It is broken down as such:

Item	$ (pa)
Repairs and service	734
Comprehensive insurance	460
CTP / Rego	762
Depreciation*	2381
Total (fixed costs)	4337
Petrol	2500
Total (fixed and variable costs)	6837

This makes transport expenditure roughly comparable to the annual cost of groceries (excluding alcohol, probably).

To make this work, we therefore need to rent cars, hire taxis and access public transport for less than $6837 per year.

$6837 potentially goes a long way. A back-of-the-fag-packet calculation for instance, shows that this is the equivalent of around 180 days - or half a year's - worth of car hire (long term deals and petrol excluded).

Assuming that over a year, we would want to hire a car for maybe 1 weekend in 3, this would only cost us around $1600-$1800 per year. Throw in the extra public transport fares and the odd taxi ride, and I reckon there's still change left over.

In summary, convenience [when we compare ourselves to the Joneses] will scupper this plan, not money.