Don’t forget the cost of parking and tickets! We live in San Francisco and spend $65 a month for garage parking downtown for my husband’s scooter (garage parking for a car would be significantly higher), which is cheaper than metered parking. Then you can add metered parking for the rest of the city, and the cost of the inevitable tickets, too. We have a car in addition to his scooter.

Excellent point, Kristen! Thank you for making it.

I knew a friend of a friend who supposedly paid something like $60,000 for a single parking spot in downtown DC in the early 2000s. Almost makes me want to look him up to see if his parking spot is now “underwater” post real estate bubble.

Scary numbers! I drive many more miles than this and my maintenance is much higher. Living in the state with the highest insurance costs in the nation doesn’t help either. One good thing is that my finance charges are low. I don’t pay for parking at home, but I do at work.

This is why you buy a good used car and drive it FOREVER. My dad bought a used Volvo in the 80s and drove it around until the 2000 then donated to a charity and got a tax write off for more than he paid in the 80s for it!

Wow that’s impressive! Definitely one of the secrets of being the unassuming millionaire next door.