I was wondering the other day how much money we avoid spending by being a car-free family versus the average car-owning family. From a bit of web-searching I found a suggestion that the average annual cost of running a car in the UK is £3,580. Another source suggested £3,552.

What is quite surprising is the array of costs that are associated with keeping a car going – fuel, insurance, repairs etc. And, when you start to think about the potential variability of fueling, insuring and repairing/servicing your car I can well imagine many peoples’ car costs are well above that amount.

Then there is the cost of buying your vehicle with quite a bamboozling array of purchase/financing options that I fortunately have little knowledge of because I haven’t ever lost my car-free-dom. Again depending on what you are looking for from your car it must vary a lot. Some research by Kwik-Fit suggested that average monthly car finance payment, allowing for depreciation, is approximately £226.

I am assuming that like many of the costs in our cost of living crisis car-costs are only on the up-and-up, so what are reliable current numbers I am not sure. However, from this bit of searching around it is fair to say that even what some might see as a ‘modest motor’ is definitely not going to go unnoticed from your living costs! Particularly, if you are not earning much more than the median UK household disposable income of somewhere around £32,000.

We’ve never totalled up our travel costs over the year to make any solid financial costs comparisons, but it is fair to say that – even on over priced UK public transportation – you get a lot of bus journeys for the money you will drain on a keeping your motor running.

In car-free-dom not only do you not have the financial stress of keeping a car going, you also don’t have those worries about something, or somebody, potentially going awry with your money hungry car companion. Phew!