Is $1365/mo too much for renting? I’d be at a five minute walk to work.

Even with wear and tear it can't really be a dollar for every mile. I drive 100 miles a day commuting and I'd be on the street if I paid $2,000/mo for transportation.

So if you live 50 miles from work, so that's about $1000 per month in commuting expense, because you didn't use the number I wrote (one-way) and instead used round trip. Let's work this through.

You buy a car for $25000. It gets 30MPG on average. You commute 24k miles per year, so you keep the car for 5 years and sell it (you haven't used it for anything but commuting) for 5k.

So: 20k in car / 120,000 = $0.17 120k miles / 30 MPG = 4,000 gallons of fuel (78,000 lbs of CO2, by the way) at $3/gallon = 12000 / 120,000 = $0.10 3 sets of tires = $1800 + 24 oil changes=$1000 + $800 timing belt +$500 brakes = $4100 / 12000 = $0.03 Insurance cost per mile = $0.05

So for this fairly economical car we've already spent $0.35 / mile, and only included the more or less guaranteed costs. The IRS, which is not in the business of giving the benefit of the doubt to people, uses $0.57/mile.

/r/personalfinance Thread Parent