Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for December 19th, 2007

With the purchase of a smaller more reliable car, I now start to ponder whether it might be cheaper to have two small cars instead of having a small car and a Van. My wife and I have this discussion regularly and I am still curious to know whether cost wise it might be cheaper to drive two Corolla sized cars and rent when a van is needed?

I guess the parameters you need to look at are:

• How much did the two cost together. I am assuming I would buy another used Corolla-like vehicle, so the two small cars win here (over Van + small car), except that my Van is actually paid for right now, so the numbers for me are a little different.
• Maintenance costs, and this is where I may end up driving my van into my mechanic and see if he’ll trade it in for one of his used cars. I have a lemon of a van, which if I hadn’t had a long term warranty would have been a MASSIVE drain on my finances. This is the biggest problem, my guess is if I had a more reliable van (say a Honda or a Toyota) I might not be thinking this.
• Day to day running expenses and this is again where two small cars wins, especially with these high gas prices these days too.
• Insurance for the two small cars would be cheaper than Van + Small Car as well.
• The big question is if I had two small(er) cars, how many times would I “need” to have a Van or larger vehicle and how many times I would rent a vehicle for this reason?
• Trips to Grandparents
• Some basketball trips

A very perplexing question, that I am mulling over and would welcome opinions from my loyal and smart readers.

Stress At Work, Unproductive?

Read that one from Stats Canada and went, “I’ll take D’UH for $1500 Alex”. The opening sentence says it all:

Work-related stress has a direct bearing on the current and long-term productivity of Canadian workers in terms of reduced work activities, disability days and absenteeism, according to a new study.

Oh really? I would never have guessed!