So, in your case, you only really need to make more to afford a walkable lifecycle if you still want to own a car and have the option to use it to drive to places outside of your walking distance. Of course, completely moving to a lifestyle where all travel is public trasit and airport-based is tough to achieve, but it could be a worthwhile price to pay depending on how often you travel and where (since the time investment is also high for cars in the U.S. with how far apart each city is from the next).
0: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/average-monthly-ca...
1: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-i...
Apart from Uber or hitching a ride from a friend, there's no good transportation option to our airport but I get your point. I think in most cases, given the option between a walkable (to work and restaurants) neighborhood and no car (and no good public transit), and suburbia with a car, most people would choose suburbia. Ease of getting groceries, ease of access to recreation, etc. What's really missing is the transit investment.
This can be a working strategy if you don't have a dollar to your name (whomever you hit won't be able to squeeze blood out of a stone), and never intend to have a dollar to your name, but is generally ill-advised for someone in the middle-class, who has money and assets to lose.
Pretty much illegal everywhere in the US except for a few weird outliers. I think there’s one southern state that lets you have a bond instead of insurance?
When you're poor and you live in an area completely unserved by public transit and you lose your license because you can't afford to pay parking tickets, are you really going to stop driving and lose your job and become homeless?
We have statistics to show what unlicensed and uninsured driver crash and fatality rates are like and they're a lot higher than the rest of the cohort, but there's still a sizable part of the US population that does all of these things and still uses the same public road infrastructure as everyone else, often out of lack of alternatives.
If you never get pulled over, or you know some tricks, you slide by.
lets knock that down to $250/month
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...
And to get your car registered in most states, you usually only have to pass an emissions test, have a valid license, and have proof of insurance at the time that you register the car.
This means that 11 out of 12 months, you get to drive around without insurance.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/data-2023-savings...
(Used) car prices continue to climb.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/15/new-use...
Subprime auto loans continue to be fairly popular, Investopedia is claiming about 40% of used car loans are subprime.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subprime_auto_loans.asp https://www.consumerreports.org/car-financing/many-americans...
So, no, rich people aren't driving these ballooning loans they're going to the working poor. The excruciatingly poor don't own cars. Defaults were ticking up leading into the pandemic, people are simply living beyond their means at this point. Cars are expensive and have been getting more and more expensive.
I think you can do this in most states; I know you can in my state (MA).
The most common is "farm implement operated incidentally over a highway".
* Insurance: $640
* Registration: $51
* Repairs: $200
* Depreciation: $300
* Opportunity cost (assuming a 6% ROI on the $10k): $600
All in cost (excluding gas): $1790
At the time, I was comparing the cost of owning a car vs using car2go, uber, etc for a few trips a month. In the end, it basically just showed that owning a car wasn't all that expensive, and the convenience was WELL worth it.
My current car is worth ~$5k, and these numbers are actually a fairly good representation of my costs over the past few years. I take it in once a year to get the oil changed, and do other small repairs, but otherwise it just kinda.. works. Parking and other costs from living in a city might swing this calculus a bit more, but at the end of the day, you don't need a brand new car, and a modest 10 year old car can drive well, without costing you very much.