As discussed on the post “Going carless”, we gave up our car in June last year. Admittedly, it has been a rough time since then, specifically regarding COVID.

General observations:

  • most of my friends have been extremely kind and offered lifts if I’m not too far out of the way (and this has often been the case since I am living in a central location)
  • I have only caught an Uber a few times (4 to be precise)
  • We have increased our Ubereats usage, but I suspect that would have happened anyway
  • Going up the coast to visit my family has become more of a risk / pain, since spending 1.5 hours on public transport is not exactly COVID safe (though now masks are mandatory it’s a big relief)
  • On the other hand, going up the coast feels more relaxing since I am forced to only pack what I really need
  • Having to spend money on a Goget every time I want to get tested for COVID sucks a lot
  • We’ve adapted pretty well to buying groceries online, which is something we would have done anyway
  • The incentive to do more walking has been really positive – what would otherwise be a stressful 5 minute trip + 5 minutes of swearing in a parking lot is now a refreshing 30 minute walk
  • Similarly, catching public transport has freed up a lot of little pieces of time I can spend reading or watching Tiktok on my phone
  • My parents lent us their car when we did a road trip in September, which helped us a lot – we would have had to pay for a car hire otherwise

Goget

I wanted to write about Goget specifically, because it is the highest cost replacement for a car that we have used (I don’t count public transport since it is universally the cheapest option). We’ve actually pretty rarely used Goget as far as I can tell, approximately once a month.

  • Once in June to do an IKEA run + dispose of a broken TV
  • Once in July to get tested for COVID
  • Once in August to buy a TV
  • Once in December to get a COVID test
  • Once in January to get a COVID test

Pretty much all of these times have only set us back ~$30, so we are already ahead on insurance+rego costs, yet alone the cost of buying and maintaining a car.