What is your cost per day?

[Wine dude]

But you haven’t figured in devaluation as it ages, since u are paying that forward as well

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[GregP27]

I'd be more worried about cost per mile than cost per day. Cost per mile could be total cost per mile or operating cost per mile. Operating cost depends on who is calculating it. Some include just gas, parking, tolls, etc. Others factor in cost of maintenance over a certain number of miles. Very few factor in initial purchase cost for operating cost.

In the U.S.A., if you use you car for business purposes, most companies will reimburse you for a certain cost per mile. So, I'll likely track cost per mile my way and, if they don't reimburse me enough to pay for my Mustang, I'll just use theirs or have them rent one. No point using up my car for business purposes if I have to pay into it to do it. If there is a small surplus, I might use mine if it wasn't frequent.

When I traveled as an engineer, I always had a company rental unless it was quite local ... say, within 50 miles. Mostly, it was in another city or cities that required an airplane ride or two.

 

[Hack]

I think you may be calculating your "per day" costs incorrectly.

You are only factoring in the time span of the loan. You need to consider how long you anticipate owning the car?

I bought my car as a long-term possession, and given my age (48), there is a good chance I'll own it until I depart from this earth; in other words 20-40 years from now.

There is no reason I shouldn't have my car that long. It isn't my DD, and I take the maintenance to religious levels, so it should be looking/driving/running well 20 years from now, no problem!

So, I would suggest you calculate your "per day" costs not by the time span of the loan, but on the anticipated span of ownership. When you do that, your "per day" costs drop way, way down.

I agree with these thoughts, but only in the context of helping a person to make the decision about when to sell a car and purchase a replacement. I think that calculating costs of a car based on plans that may or may not come to fruition doesn't completely make sense.

And if you don't daily drive the car, your costs should probably also include the other car that you use as a daily driver to "save" money.

 

[NoVaGT]

Jeeeesus......who cares?

 

[boB]

An interesting question, one that really puts a $$ number on what is often a toy car. My '94 Z28 was about $25,000 so about $2.74 a day. Add taxes, maintenance (not much), insurance and maybe it is about $4/day.
I plan to keep my new Mustang for at least 10 years so it may be about $14/day, not cheap but about 15% of what it would cost to go to a theme park for my thrill rides!

 

[GregP27]

If you start tracking your costs for gas, oil, and maintenance, it SHOULD be fairly consistent as cost per 1,000 miles. You do NOT just look at costs every 1,000 miles, you pick a starting point, track all the costs you are going to track and, every 1000 miles, calculate the cost per 1000.

Suppose you average 16 mpg, change your oil every 5,000 miles, replace the original tires at 4k and then every 30k. I'd look at costs every oil change.

1st oil change: 427.50 per 1k. Bought tires.
2nd: 347.50
3rd: 320.83
4th: 307.50
5th: 299.50
6th: 294.17
7th: 313.21 (bought tires)

Every time it takes a jump, note why. When maintenance costs start to accelerate, you are probably hitting wearout of some components. You have to decide when enough is enough.

That's the way many police departments do it. They reach a point where the costs start to move upward and keep doing that. That's when it's time to update the fleet.

 

[66Bronc1]

Too many variables in looking at this but it got my attention. If I include only my car payment, insurance and registration and it just sits there and is not driven it cost me $7.72 a day. That does not include maintenance, depreciation, tire wear, etc. just my out of pocket cost per day right now.

If I drive it anywhere on a particular day I would simply add the gas in.

I could include oil changes 2X a year too for a total cost as well but being anew car that would be it for maintenance.

 

[Zelek]

Look, we all made poor investment decisions by buying a car in the first place. Even worse decisions when we started modding these said cars.

Now that's out of the way, go drive it and have fun. Enjoy life.

 

[Nomadic]

Without a toy budget, Im less motivated to work hard, earn promotions, complete my graduate degree, and otherwise do all those things in life that arent fun.

^^^^^^^
What he said.

 

[Freedom]

I think it’s better not to know

 

[Hack]

Jeeeesus......who cares?

The OP and many of the posters in the thread. I'm not planning to try to track my Mustang/car costs, but it's interesting to me anyway.

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