How Much Do You Think Your Vehicles Cost Per Year?

My truck is definitely in the average range, maybe slightly higher with payments, insurance, taxes, fuel and maintenance (last being one of the lowest cost of the bunch)
 
If you buy new or lightly used, the key is keep your vehicle long enough to get into the sweet spot where depreciation slows but repairs aren't killing you. Helps to do the right preventative maintenance and buy a reliable vehicle in the first place.
 
Mine are all a good value for the services, convenience, safety, and/or pleasure they provide. They're all paid for, so it's just amortizing their cost per mile or per year. Plus insurance, which runs about $1-$2 per day low and high value vehicles. Maintenance is not free, but costs mitigated by doing as much myself as possible, and buying discounted parts and supplies (often in advance of actually needing them) when on sale/clearance.

For my "working" vehicles, I deduct the money they earn me. For instance, if my $10,000 car earns $12000 in fares this year, the net benefit of that car is $2000 profit. So the car paid for itself, and earned $2k.
 
About $2000 more per year per our 2 main driving vehicles since Jan 20th
 
Depreciation would probably be about $1500 per year each these days, plus about $600 a year on insurance, and $1200 or so on fuel, I'd say total would be about 7-9k a year total for all 3 of our cars.

With work from home a lot of family can cut down on the fuel and maybe insurance, but the depreciation is likely going to stay.
 
The Honda civic is about $2500 CDN per year which includes insurance, gas and maintenance. The Caravan is paid off now and probably cost me between $3000-3500 a year to operate.
 
With doing most of the maintenance/repairs myself I'd guess all in probably around $1.5-$2K a year on my '02 Ford
Escort. The cost is still dropping on my '16 Nissan that I bought with a rebuilt title in Feb. 2019. I've kept records of initial cost of vehicle, gas, repairs/maintenance, tax and tags but, haven't included insurance costs into the record. For 2.5 years and just over 20K miles those total costs are slightly under $7K. Of that $7000 roughly $5700 was initial purchase price, tax/license and license renewals. It hasn't needed any repairs. I've changed oil/filter a few times, changed CVT fluid/filters, put 2 new tires on it and bought a little over 400 gallons of gas for it. I'm also keeping a running cost per mile which is currently between $ .35-.36/mile excluding insurance. For the BITOG record you have to consider the oil I've been using in it was bought for $ .50/quart instead of $5/quart and filters from Rock Auto at a final cost of $2.04 each including shipping instead of $10. each.
 
STI:
Depreciation - $0, it hasn't lost a penny in 6 years
Payment- $0
Registration- $80
Insurance- $900
Oil- $30
Other maintenance- $100
Fuel- $900
TOTAL: ~ $2000/year

MK7 TDI:
Depreciation - around $1500/yr currently
Payment- $265/m
Registration- $50
Insurance- $900
Oil- $150
Other maintenance- $250
Fuel- $2300
TOTAL: ~ $8300/year
 
I added up fuel, insurance, registration and normal wear parts... I'm looking at about $2900 per year for the Tacoma. It is paid off.
 
Since I bought a Tacoma new last year before the chip shortage began to push up prices, I've enjoyed a temporary negative cost of ownership since the price of the Tacoma is probabloy higher today than it was when I bought it. That coupled with low insurance rates and low usage during Covid lockdown have allowed for a very rare phenonon - making money by buying new. :)
 
I still have a payment, so it's going to really inflate the total. I guessed $1000 a year in maintenance and parts cost, but that's not even going to be enough to replace the Edge tires when they are due.

My guesstimate is around $16,000. Three cars.
 
“Running a half-ton pickup with a monstrous motor? AAA has some bad, albeit predictable, news for you relating to your decision to own something from a segment boasting the highest overall driving costs at 77.3 cents a mile.” Doesn’t make sense with the current market. My 1/4 ton as a trade in to carvana, is worth 3k more than I paid for it (including interest paid) in 2019 and that’s with me driving it 36,000 miles since then. 1/2 ton resell prices have sky rocketed even more so.
 
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