Our five-month car experiment
Although I’ve had my driver’s license for almost two decades, I’ve never owned a car.
That’s because I prefer living in the city, where getting around on foot, by bike or by public transport is more relaxed, cheaper and usually faster than driving a car. What’s more, no car means no maintenance costs, no traffic jams, and no desperate hunting for parking spots.
Also, I never felt like I missed out on anything, because on those rare occasions when I needed a car, I just rented one. And thanks to modern car sharing services, this has become almost effortless: open an app, select the closest car, tap a button, jump into the car, and start driving!
But things changed when my wife and I became parents of two kids.
Suddenly, there’s all this stuff we need to carry around with us: baby seats, strollers, food, extra clothes, diapers, just to name a few.
Furthermore, we want to get out of the city a lot more. Even though our local park is really nice, it pales in comparison to actual nature: forests, lakes, fields, that sort of thing.
Because of that, owning a car suddenly looks a lot more appealing. But of course, it doesn’t come cheap.
To figure out if a car is a valuable addition to our life, we rented one for the next five months.
During that time, we’re planning to do at least two large trips to visit friends we otherwise wouldn’t see. Perhaps, we might even do a trip to Scandinavia. But more importantly, we want to do many small trips (just one or two days, getting out of the city and into nature, looking for family adventures there).
After these five months, we’ll take some time to reflect: Did we actually use the car as often as we thought we would? Did we have a great time together? Did the car improve our life meaningfully?
If the answer to all these questions is a clear yes, I might actually end up owning a car for the first time in my life.