I-Like-To-Bike

I may have said it to include living in large college campus communities. I believe that to be the case for adults who actually do not have regular access to a personal car.

Using your reasoning of cherry picking a specific stat, anybody who doesn't live in S.F. or Boston is gaining 70K a year and should be able to live a couple of years on the savings.

The point is that not owning a car saves lots of money (unless it is spent on alternative transportation modes.) The amount saved though hardly seems enough to provide a person an "income" for 50% of an adult's life.

I imagine that people who pay exorbitant fees for parking can afford it, if not they find alternative parking arrangements.

Roody

The average American spends about 20% of income on car and car expenses. So a sabbatical one year out of every five would be more in the range for a carfree person. What I do is work one day less per week, which amounts to the same thing.

I-Like-To-Bike

You are of course assuming that a carfree person can accomplish the same transportation related functions in those four years as the "average American" without spending a dime. And won't have any transportation related expenses during the sabbatical year.

Mobile 155

The simple answer for me is I became car light because I like riding my bikes. The bonus was I also had no real reason to be car heavy. But I do like to travel and I have a travel trailer so I keep my truck.

Roody

I never spent more than a couple hundred bucks a year on bike expenses. Maybe another hundred on the bus. So transportation is not a large item in my budget. YMMV.

I-Like-To-Bike

YMMV is the key phrase. Doubtful that many families can effectively/practically use bicycles to travel year round about as they do now to/from home, work, school, activities, vacation travel, etc. I suppose carfree living sabbaticals will be more likely if/when people decide to live like yourself, or like others who boast of their simple lifestyle and choose to do nothing that cannot be accomplished by bicycle or a couple of hundred$ a year for public transit.

Roody

I'm just sharing my experience with whoever is interested. I don't know or care if it will work for most families or many families or just a few families. As for living a simple life, guilty as charged.

I-Like-To-Bike

Nothing new about that; and nothing new about off the wall statements suggesting/implying that carfree living is the same as life with a car, just without the significant transportation expenses, or that the "savings" from life w/o a car will subsidize year long sabbaticals while maintaining all along the equivalent lifestyle as those who do own cars.

I-Like-To-Bike

Yet at the same time you have no problem quoting from an unknown source or fabricating factoids about car expenses for the average Americans and what % it is of their income. You object whenever someone points out that his own car expenses are no where close to the numbers you and others arrive at by grabbing cherry picked factoids off of the Internet without any qualification about what expenses are included in those numbers.

Roody

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/livability/f...andhousing.cfm

dynodonn 

My motivation was that I really enjoyed riding my bicycle as a kid, and I rode it every chance I could, since it meant freedom from staying home and enabling me to visit school friends that lived several miles away. Today I still bicycle since it's just a continuation of my enjoyment of riding a bicycle in my youth.

Ekdog

It may be like a drop in the bucket for a high roller like you, but many of the families that you purport to be concerned about would no doubt appreciate the extra food that kind of money could put on the dinner table.

It should also be pointed out that not all parents and grandparents are as blasé as you seem to be about catastrophic global climate change and the effects it will have on their descendants if we take your advice and carry on with the car-centric lifestyles that became the norm in the twentieth century.

chewybrian 

Ek, you had me all ready to pile on, but your snip took ILTB out of context. He said that was not much to live on for a year. If you saved $7500 from being car-free and used it to take the next year off work, that would not be a lot to go on (though I'm certain I could).

It is, however, a serious chunk of discretionary spending (in many cases near all), and will make a big difference in financial health in the long run for most people if you bank it instead of having a car.

(just having fun with the snip on you)

I-Like-To-Bike

Few families that you purport to be SOOOO concerned about are about to take off from work for a sabbatical every few years and live of the alleged carfree savings like that claimed possible by LCF New Age/bohemian posters. Few families or even individuals are about to have the income producer take a voluntary year long income free sabbatical with savings O/H and other income total of only $5,000 or $10,000. That is the issue being discussed, not your sociological and environmental hobbyhorses.

Ekdog

Maybe you're right about my editing, so I've changed my post to include all of his words.

Ekdog

JoeyBike says he's taken many a year-long sabbatical thanks to his car-free lifestyle, and I have no reason not to believe him. With regard to low-income families, if you doubt that an extra five or ten thousand dollars a year would be useful to many of them in their struggle to provide their children with nutritious meals, I suggest you leave your posh neighborhood for a few hours and motor over to your nearest ghetto. I'm sure the folks who live there would be more than happy to set you straight.

Machka 

Let's keep this thread on topic ... to what motivated us to choose a car-free or car-light lifestyle.


The subject of a sabbatical year off is what motivated one poster, and is an interesting topic, but perhaps the financial ins and outs of such a move could be it's own thread.

I-Like-To-Bike

As far as Joey's motivation to be car-free, I believe every word he wrote. My guess is few people would admire him and less would hold his "motivation" as a role model for anything except as an example of getting over with minimum effort and sloth. But there are always outliers who admire all sorts of behavior to include indolence. I also suspect that few would choose to voluntarily live on a total income of $5,000 to $10,000 every other year if they had the ability to do any better for themselves. Doubles or triples the doubt if anybody else is dependent on that income.

Obviously if someone has the ability, motivation and lack of ethics to game the "System" to supplement that income in order to live a life of leisure and sloth there might be some who find that a challenge.

Keep whipping up on your own wacky misinterpretation of what I responded; and ride your worn out hobbyhorse about the People's Struggles every chance you get until it drops from exhaustion

Ekdog

Okay, fair enough.

gerv 

Great idea..staying on topic!

I remember at the time bicycling being a whole lot of fun and, at the same time, I wanted to stop buying gasoline for ethical reasons. (This was 2005 and there was a lot of concerns about the Iraq War being motivated by the need for oil supply...)

Ekdog

At least one member of this forum has an avatar that reads something like this: Bicycling Against Oil Wars. That's been a major motivation for me, as has the environment, especially global climate change. Another is the slaughter on our roads and highways. I don't want to support all of that death and destruction.

koolerb

Every time you can substitute a bike for a car on a trip you're doing a lot for your own well being, and just a little bit for the world.

That's my little ray of sunsunshine for the night. Cheers!

gerv 

I can't say it continues to be a motivation though. Rather nowadays I look to adopt practices that are "elegant" rather than green or "pro environment". For example riding a bicycle to work is an elegant solution because it accomplishes it with great simplicity. I don't use a vehicle that is 15 times my weight. If I could walk that distance, that would be a better solution.

Over time our motivation is refined and sometimes re-directed.

Ekdog

I don't understand your post. Are you no longer concerned about the environment? Are oil wars OK with you now? Have your motivations really changed or have you just gone over to a newer, hipper terminology?

"Elegant"? That's an adjective that's often used in ads for cars.

gerv 

A while back I read an essay by Dave Owen in which he pointed out that the average New Yorker consumes -- without considering themselves "green" or "eco-friendly" -- a lot less than any other population segment in North America, including many who have established themselves in "green" environments (for example, energy efficient housing or organic farms). For example, a green activity might entail purchasing local produce at a Farmer's Market. However, if looked at closely, procurement and purchase involves a lot of gasoline transportation. A New Yorker might instead purchase at a local market because it is simply closer.

The walk to the local market is an "elegant" solution.

The term elegant is described rather nicely here. I'm particularly impressed with engineering "elegance"