The car: what does it cost just sitting there?
Your car costs you money even on days you don't drive. How much exactly?
We have a car. Nothing special, but it runs and does what it needs to do. When I started calculating what my life costs per day, the car stood out.
Not because of fuel — that fluctuates and feels like something you control. But because of everything around it. Insurance, road tax, depreciation, maintenance, parking. That adds up, every day, whether you drive or not. For us, it came to an amount that surprised me. Not shocking, but enough to pause and think.
Most car owners think in terms of kilometers or fill-ups. But the real costs are the fixed costs — you pay those even when the car sits idle for a week. That makes it hard to estimate, because it feels like the car is “free” once you have it. It’s not. Not per day, at least.
This isn’t a plea to get rid of your car. For us, it’s practically indispensable. But it is an argument for honest accounting. If your car costs you ten euros a day — three hundred a month, thirty-six hundred a year — it’s good to know that. So you can weigh it against alternatives. Or simply accept it as a conscious choice.
It makes a difference whether you pay for something without thinking about it, or you pay and know exactly why.