First Salt Bath!

[Viperoni]

Originally Posted by JustPassinThru

Yup.

It also needs to have the insurance returned on it; and it needs about $100 worth of servicing done.

And those miles add up.

And I'm not PAYING for it - it's paid for. A car costs between ten and twenty cents a mile just in wear and depreciation. Do the math! A $22,000 car you run for 200,000 miles and then sell for $2000 as a beater or trade in.

I'm figuring this trip will run me 2000 miles; more if I have a lot of chasing around to do at the other end. Which I will if they offer me the job and I have to arrange housing.

So a $200 cost...is just paying for the wear.

Let's work with the 2000 mile number for the trip, it is nice and round.
In terms of maintenance, let's assume that we've used 1/3 of an oil change ($45/3 = $15) and 1/20 of a tranny fluid change ($120/20 =$6), and 1/20 of a set of tires ($380/20 = $19). That's $40.

So we've got $160 to count towards depreciation on the car, which works out to $160/2000 = $0.08/mile.

Using your $22k car that will last 200k miles figure, costing you $0.10/mile, I agree that renting is a better idea, especially when the car is newer, as the mileage would affect the value more than if the car had more miles (IE: over 100k).

However, we know that new cars are poor value propositions, and I'd counter with a used 2009 Yaris with ~50k that costs $9k, would cost $0.06 in depreciation to get to 200k.

So in your case, not even accounting for the fact that it was paid for, you obviously made the right choice. For a used car owner, it'd cost them $20 ontop of depreciation to rent... basically paying $20 to not age the car as quickly (and perhaps not pepper the windshield with chips as much).

Example of 2009 Yaris prices in a more expensive market, for posterity: http://newyork.craigslist.org/search...ris&catAbb=sss