How To Retire 6 Months Every Year
(Page 4 of 22)
May/June 1970
By Irv Thomas
Then there is the principle of making it easy on yourself; which is sort of an overall guideline. In the first flush of determination; it is so easy to go plowing ahead and damn the torpedoes. But it's a lot wiser to consider the expected consequences of every move you make, and try to gear yourself to the effects. If you are moving from a three room to a two room apartment to save $30.00 per month, for example, what will the space reduction do to your daily living? The advance preparation you make to offset the sudden feeling of being cramped and stifled will affect your ability to accept the adjustment. This principle is of vital importance in dropping out of the automobile game.
RELATED CONTENT
THE AUTOMOBILE
This is a good point to begin detailed examination of how to live better for less, for the automobile is way ahead of every other flagrant money-waster in our lives.
First of all, let's see what you - YOU - are really paying for the questionable pleasure of driving one. I am going to detail my own cost figures here, but it's very important that you get a pencil right now and figure your costs alongside mine, for unless YOU realize what YOU are paying, you will not find the necessary incentive to give up your chariot.
Mine was a modest car, price-tagged at $3400, with a four-year turn-in value of $1000 . . . and I've been very reasonable with these estimates. It is possible to spread the capital expense of a car over more than 4 years, of course, but repairs have a way of catching up with the paper savings, quality being what it is. Most studies have shown that the difference between new and used car total operating costs is not very great. These are the per year figures:
That is $1704 per year! If your net take home pay is $850 per month, you are putting two months work a year into supporting that car. If your net take home pay is $570 per month, that car is making you work three months a year for its support. Since this about spans the normal range of take home pay, it means that some 20% of all the work done in this country is solely devoted to supporting automobiles! Are you quite sure you want to be a part of that addiction? There are alternatives if you don't.
I would like to say that I quit driving because I reasoned this all out and exerted a tremendous force of will power to sell my car and be done with it. I didn't, of course, and I don't think anyone really can. There are more creative and pleasurable ways to give up addictions. Certainly more effective ways.
In my case, I was literally forced out of my auto addiction - I had no car and no money to buy one. There is a lot to be said for this method, since nothing in the way of will power is required. Unfortunately, these conditions cannot be artifically created, so those of you - other than the lucky few who are flat broke (and they are lucky) - will have to approach it from another direction. A little relocation of your life might be necessary and, as you consider the plan that I lay out, you might think about the 2-1/2 to 3 months each year that you're working to support that bummer out there in the garage.
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