Not Having to Worry about the Price of Gas
We have two cars in our household, a Toyota Echo and a Honda CRV. The Echo was mine before Andrew and I married, but he drives it now because it’s an ideal commuter car. [It gets very, very nice mpg.] His commute is less than 10 miles each way, I think he puts some gas in every other week. The CRV that I drive isn’t quite as fuel efficient, but it does fit two car seats and two dogs quite nicely. Audrey and I will, maybe, make one 10-20 mile trip or so during the week, and some weeks we don’t drive at all. If we go somewhere as a family on the weekend, it’ll be in the CRV, but I do our grocery shopping on Sunday morning in the Echo. We put a half a tank of gas in the CRV every week and a half or so.
Honestly, I think gas could be 5 dollars a gallon and it wouldn’t even make a blip in our budget [save for other things, like groceries, that would become more expensive due to shipping increases, etc]. I feel very blessed in that regard. Being a homebody has many financial advantages.
Tricia said,
April 16, 2006 @ 8:54 am
I have an Echo too and I love it!! That little car may get teased for being so little, but you cannot argue with the gas mileage. It gets about 45mpg highway and 35 mpg city.
The Echo is our only working vehicle at the moment, and normally we only fill up monthly right now because I work at home and my husband only works about 3 miles from home.
We are the same way when gas prices rise. We don’t even notice until it is time to gas up because it isn’t very often. I cringe when I think of the truck we used to have that we traded in for the Echo. It only had about 14 mpg. I think trading our truck in was one of the best financial decisions we made.
Glad to see another pf blogger with an Echo
Mike said,
April 17, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Another way the Echo will help you - at least, if it’s anything like mine - is that it requires very little repair, in addition to drinking very little gas! I *finally* had to take it for its very first “repair” visit to the shop… at 109,000 miles. I did have the brakes done (front only) at 98,000 miles (the rears are still originals) and the water pump finally decided to have a bad day hence this repair visit, but I’ve spent less than $1,500 sum total on routine maintanence and repairs for this car since I bought it in November of 1999. I do my own routine stuff, which helps ($6 for an oil change insead of $25), but it’s been a phenomenally dependable and dirt cheap car. And with oil changes suggested only every 7500 miles and spark plugs only every 120,000 miles (!!) (although it may only be the ‘00 models that have the iridium 120kmile plugs - I think that at least some of the later models have the 60kmile platinums) even if you don’t do your own routine work it’s still relatively cheap.
Oh - and the timing chain all by itself means saving ~$500 every 60k miles when everyone else has to change their timing belts!
In case it’s not obvious, I love my Echo…
Mike, happy Echo owner