Owning a car in the United States can be expensive. One driver says she’s hanging up her keys and turning in her car as a result.
According to Yahoo! Finance, the average monthly car payment for new cars is $726, while the average monthly car payment for used cars is $533. Add those costs to an average full coverage insurance payment of between $172 and $223 monthly—and a AAA-estimated maintenance cost of around $1,015 per month—and an American driver could easily be paying more than their rent in car costs alone.
Given this, it’s understandable that some are seeking alternatives to constantly driving around a car. Unfortunately, many locations in America lack adequate public transit, leaving people with one main alternative for transport: rideshare.
Are Uber and Lyft cheaper than owning a car?
In a clip with over 394,000 views, TikTok user Kayla Lee Mills (@kaylaleemills) follows up on a video in which she alleged that Geico upped her insurance payment to $520 per month.
Now, Mills says that, after calculating the various costs, she found it was better for her to simply utilize rideshare services rather than continue owning a car.
“I did some math today, and I will be saving money if I’m Ubering, Lyfting, using some car rental service—versus paying the $520 a month in car insurance, and then also paying for my car, and that’s excluding gas and other things,” she details.
Continuing on, she says that, if she finds a driver she likes, she hopes that they will be able to serve as a go-to driver for her, as she notes that some Uber and Lyft drivers have companies that operate this kind of service.
“And then I’ll just pay them directly and help support a family, versus pay to Honda, pay to Geico, pay to these corporations that are making billions of dollars off of us,” she concludes.
Commenters say the cost of a car has gotten too expensive
In the comments section, many users shared their complaints about the presently high costs of owning a vehicle.
“i’m so OVER car insurance. mine was going to be $680 last month (CLEAN record), my bf just added me to his for $63/month,” said a user. “like where do they even come up with this stuff???”
@kaylaleemills Replying to @circa8719 ♬ original sound – kayla lee
“I loved when I turned 26, with my same car from 2012 and a clean record and it increased by $200 monthly. SICK,” added another.
“I moved to Florida and between my car payment, insurance and gas it was easily over $1200 a month,” recalled a third. “it didn’t make any sense so I sold my car to car max and budgeted for ubers.”
“I never had a car in Boston and it made me feel so much less guilty when I ubered everywhere,” claimed a further TikToker. “I could uber every day and not reach the amount a car payment, insurance, gas, maintenance, etc cost.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Mills via email.
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