Life Without Car: A Look Back
By Tim Joyce, KOIN Local 6 Environmental Reporter
I looked back in my personal blog archive to unearth this missive from March of 2008. I wrote it the day I sold my personal car. It’s provides some insight into my brain when I got rid of it.
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Well, I did it.
I am without an automobile (again).
The last time I lived without an automobile I had just finished my sophomore year of college. Gas cost about 95 cents a gallon-- and crude oil was about 19 dollars a barrel. I had just obtained the highly coveted job of Resident Assistant. RAs get free room and board, dirt cheap in-state tuition, and a stipend (at the time) of $82.50 a month. This made my annual college cost go from about 12,000 dollars a year to about 1,200 dollars a year. So, my dad got me a car while I was home for a shortened summer break. It was 1993-- and I have had a car pretty much every day since then-- until today.
Things are far apart on the west coast and the idea that there is need for your own car is very powerful perception to overcome. There is a strong identification that car = independence. It is an idea that infected me quite thoroughly for many years. With the exception of my friend Adrian's powerfully convincing argument that you need a car to be able to escape a zombie invasion-- most of the reasons for every person to have their own car just don't hold up for someone like me. I am healthy, I live close to work, I work downtown, I live in a city that has pretty good mass transit, I have a member of a shared vehicle service (ZipCar), I own a bicycle and I am not afraid to use it. Almost all of these are conscious choices I have made in the past few years-- so we'll see how it works out.
So, while I've been trying to live without a car since last October-- today it starts for real. Most listings for this vehicle range from 12-15 thousand dollars. At the time I bought it two years ago used for 13,500. So, my first (optimistic) listing was for 11k, but no takers. The second one was for 10,500-- and at the time I almost sold it to a co-worker who had me get it detailed for his wife. I was going to sell it to him for 8k-- but she didn't like that it was a stick shift. Monday, I dropped the price slightly to 9,500 dollars-- which did the trick. Five calls/emails from interested parties. The first person to look at it was the one who bought it.
Turns out her and her partner were a one car household until they had a car accident and it was totaled. They loved the Hyundai Santa Fe and were looking specifically for this model. The gal today just got a new job as a teacher at a charter school and she was very excited to have found the vehicle.
I only owed 3,900 bucks on the car-- so I walk away with a nice pocket of change for the transaction. Goodbye to my 250 dollar car payment too! This gal gets a great deal on a good car-- we're both happy. Bonus: I called my insurance company to cancel the policy-- turns out they're sending me a check for 373 dollars as a refund for not finishing out the policy.
Now the real adventure begins. I am without a car for the first time in 15 years. Let's hope there are no zombie invasions.
