Single Car Living

Yesterday, I drove my husband to work, I drove myself to my first hearing in Essex, I drove back to my husband's office, took the bus from his office to my office, and then took the bus to court for an afternoon hearing. After the hearing, I got a ride home with a generous friend who works at the courthouse and lives around the corner.  My husband drove home from work and took the car to the shop so that the bumper could be repaired and picked up the rental car. 


All of this juggling was necessary because we are a single car family.  Normally, my husband would have just ridden his bike and I would have taken the car to the shop and picked up the rental.  However, it was 5 degrees outside when we left the house in the morning.  Biking to work in this weather was not advisable since we don't own any of the gear necessary to bike in 5 degrees. 


Being a single car family has its drawbacks.  Three years ago, we went down to only one car, and had only minor hiccups since then.  However, when my husband accepted a different job in June, things like riding his bike in the freezing cold or heavy rain or snow became a lot less possible with his different commute.  So it's hard on a day when I have to go out to the county and he needs the car to go to work. 


So far the inconvenience is not enough to require us to consider purchasing a second car, but we may hit that point.  Unfortunately, the inconvenience of having a second car far outweighs the relative benefits, because we have to find it a parking space and do the parking pad shuffle.  All of this makes purchasing a super-tiny car really appealing, but I think, unfortunately, we may be past the point in our lives where we can buy a super-tiny car and expect it to suit our needs for the next ten years. 


Before we jump to buying a second car, we also need to consider the relative costs of actually using Zipcar, Uber, Lyft, and taxicabs.  Right now, I spend maybe $10 a week on alternative transport, which at $520 a year would still be less than the estimated $3158 spent on owning a car.  That doesn't even include car payments.  Yet we have a hard time actually spending any money on alternate transportation.


Maybe this math is easier for somebody who is making a car payment and sells their car - because if I was comparing spending $50 a month on a Zipcar and $300 a month on a car payment, the Zipcar seems like a no-brainer, but our car has been paid off for awhile.  I just have such a hard time justifying the cost of a Zipcar, and I'm very concerned that if I rented a zipcar to go to court for the afternoon and rented it for 3 hours, that would be the day the courthouse is insane and I end up going way over the time I rented it for and getting hit with a hefty fine. 


Honestly, the cost of a zipcar for an hour is cheaper than the cost of the Metro in DC, but that's not math that works in Baltimore where a bus ride is $1.60.  However, public transit in Baltimore is not reliable, so I can't always take a bus where I need to go. 


Does anyone else share a car and use zipcar, etc. to get around? How do you make it work? 

Parking Permit Renewal Time

Parking permits in Baltimore City are pretty reasonable - they are $20 a year for a residential permit, and each guest permit is an additional $20. However, when you consider the added expense of going to the parking authority twice with all the necessary documentation, the cost seems higher. This year we will be picking up our permit at one of our convenient community pickup locations.  It is annoying that they aren't pro-rated, so we bought new permits last January at our old apartment, then this year in August, and then we have to get new ones now as well, paying $20 per permit and guest permit each time.  However, they are useful and the City could get away with charging way more than they do, so I try not to complain about it too much. 

I'm very curious as to whether we would be entitled to get two parking permits for our address. Because we have a parking pad, usually they will only give you one street permit and the other person has to use the parking pad, but this varies by area. I want to find out if that rule would apply to us if we bought a second car, but I don't want to ask and alert anyone who hasn't noticed yet to the fact that we have a parking pad (it's a new addition, and the parking authority is really slow to update). We rarely would park two cars on the street, but when we've had two cars, we need to be able to shuffle them.

The most annoying part is removing the stickers. Some people just let them pile up on their windshield and show how long they've been living in Area 8/16/45/30 for, but we usually opt to remove the old and put the new one on.  Right now we have both our old permit and our current permit, which is because we needed both of them for moving day and then never bothered to remove the old one. Two is where I draw the line though, so they are both coming off.  Removal has always been annoying, and since we now have an easy way to run an extension cord out to the car, I want to try the blowdryer method of sticker removal.