Forgot the gym membership. With a car you can drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill.

these days $45 at costco is like two things, and $50 at a regular grocery store is six things.

but the analogy still holds that walking is much cheaper.

Where are you shopping where you can get a weeks worth of food for only 50

Living within 1 kilometer walking distance of a grocery store is amazing. Instead of expensive fast food I can get comparatively inexpensive deli food. And if I want to be frugal and cook meals myself, cheap beans, rice, fresh meat, dairy, and produce are all available. Plus, I get a nice daily walk instead of checks notes from a previous life drive twenty minutes to the gym each day to walk on a treadmill.

Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD

pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg

flop over in the middle of traffic because the 25kg bag of rice you're balancing between your legs shifts

Once again a post about zoning laws instead of cars.

here it’s more like this:

don’t own a car no store in reach ??? starve

This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can't find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.

I've only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.

Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can't overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.

My car costed less than 6k. But yeah 1-2k on maintainence, $1200 insurance and probably 2k on gas every year. E-bikes looking very interesting.

Ok everyone. Make weekly groceries $200 and Costco $190. Does that make a difference about the point of this post? Ya’ll…

I lived next to a little natural grocery for a few years. Prices were about 20% higher than the ordinary grocery and maybe double what I'd pay at Costco. At first I was resistant because they seemed to be overcharging so much. Overtime I talked to the employees and realized the savings I made on time and not needing a car more than made up for the higher price. Plus they had to keep prices high because shoplifting was very common.

I started figuring my time and car expenses into future shopping trips and now I don't mind paying a bit more for the local co-op.

Ok let’s flip this to cherry pick my example.

Don’t need a car most of life, get to 40 and upskill and become a software engineer. Job market is terrible due to saturation and I suck at interviews so can only take a job 40 miles away from home.

No problem.exe. I can take 2.5-3 hour commute each way 5 days a week.

Fast forward a few months and I’m just dead on my feet, do nothing but go to work come home goto bed get up and repeat.

Decide this can’t continue. Can’t afford to move to the bougie town where I work so decide I need a car finally.

Save 12-15 hours per week and it’s not too much more expensive than taking a Metrolink and a train to work with 30 mins of walking too. Plus all the meals you need to eat out of the house when you’re out for 14 hours in a day.

On my days off I’ll take the tram 20 miles each way to go rock climbing but some people actually do need cars and they shouldn’t be made to feel bad for it.

Walking to my grocery store and back would be an all day affair and I'd have to have help hauling everything because I'm married with two kids, so our two week grocery bill runs between $200 and $300 depending on what all we need. My closest Walmart is 25 miles away. My closest local grocery store is about 7. And there is no public transportation here.

Here on Copenhagen:

• Buy a bicycle for 4000 dkk.
• Bike less than 1 km to arrive at Netto/Rema 1000/lidl/Coop 365.
• Buy a kanelsnegle for 8 dkk.

This is also coincidentally how the math works on big box stores.

• Big box parking lot/strip mall opens
• Save $100 on groceries annually
• Pay $150 extra in taxes and gas to maintain and drive on an additional 10 miles of road
• Local options shut down, prices go up, and it takes 5 extra minutes to get to box store with increased traffic.
• Box store eventually closes due to not being in suburb anyway.

If it weren't for weather I wouldn't have a car. Sure, 90 minutes by ebike is a serious time commitment, but I'd save so much money a year it makes sense as a part time job.

But fuck riding a bike on ice for two months lol

The dutch are laughing with their bikes with the massive storage box thing

Where the fuck is this guy buying a week's groceries for $50? My kids eat more than $50 in cereal per month.

You guys are spending $40k on a car??
That's nuts.

Usually I need to be at work 08:00 or 08:10. Furthermore, the same trip by car takes approximately 30-35 minutes during rush hour. This means my car saves me approximately 1-3hrs every working day (valued ~4k€/yr based on my current wages).

My car cost ~1k€ 8 years ago and maybe an additional 1.5k€ maintenance per year (a lot of which I do myself) + 2.5k€ fuel + insurance + tax - compared to 800€ for a public transit card.

Our family home is valued at 110k€, the same money would buy a 1 room studio apartment in the city.

Anon obviously has never been to Costco. No way you can leave that place without parting with $100

Must be nice to live where public transit works. 2h to get to and from work each way not including daycare dropoff just ain't it. Give me feasible public transit and a walkable city and I'll get rid of my car.

Only the rich or the dumb buy new. You can still get decent used cars for a fair bit cheaper.

I hate cars and love walkable cities as much as the next guy in this community, but this comparison is just nonsense.

If the only thing you do and are comparing is 4 trips a month to the grocery store that is in walkable distance you are not spending $200 a month on gas and probably also less on maintenance and stuff. And if you are only doing that you also don't need the newest and best car.

I feel like this type of bad faith analogies just hurts the message.

It would be so much we easier if they just admitted they were in highschool. Sure. The only thing I need a car for if groceries. The only thing this person needs a car for is 45$ of Mom's Costco membership worth of Doritos