At 20 years old, I had a daily commute of 100 km to and from my office. I had convinced myself that my lifestyle including many outdoor hobbies, necessitated a pickup truck. I purchased a V8 Ford F-150 with oversized tires. It was a very ‘cool’ vehicle for someone who had grown up in a small town, but I soon realized that the operating costs for 90% of my driving – to and from my office – were astronomical. Rather than downsizing, I purchased a second vehicle – a used $5,000 economy car that I began to commute with the expectation of reducing my net automobile operating costs. After owning the economy car for a year and tracking my costs for both the pickup truck and car, I realized that I was not saving any money, and had simply taken on more responsibility to manage two vehicles. While I was saving fuel costs – around $4,300 per year – and the cost of depreciating the pickup truck by driving it less – around $1,000 per year – I had taken on more ownership costs with the second car. The used car still required maintenance, fuel, and some more expensive repairs due to its high mileage including a $500 timing belt and $900 tire replacement. Furthermore, my insurance cost increased by $1,300 per year, and I had to worry about parking my two vehicles and constantly moving them – I was living at my parents’ house still during this period. After one year of owning both automobiles, I calculated that I had saved only a few hundred dollars, estimating that my net operating costs of just the F-150 would have been $17,733 versus the cost of operating both automobiles totaling $17,448. My realization that a year of hassle had saved me less than $300 was surprising and taught me two lessons: 1) a vehicle still costs you a lot of money even if you don’t drive it much, and 2) don’t buy a vehicle based on your periodic usage. I realized that for most of my driving, a pickup truck was not required. I had purchased the pickup truck for my outdoor hobbies, for which I only used the pickup truck to its potential a few times per year. Why did I buy a vehicle that cost me so much to operate for added convenience a few times per year? It seems silly, in hindsight, but I have witnessed many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances over the years convincing themselves that they ‘need’ a certain type of vehicle with similar rationalizations.

Growing up in a small town, it was very common to hear justifications like ‘I need a truck to haul my boat or trailer or ATV’. My suggestion is to reconsider your ‘needs’. Do you really need a trailer or a boat or ATV? If you simply decide that you do not ‘need’ these items, you will realize that there is no ‘need’ for large automobiles to haul them around. In the farmers’ fields surrounding my hometown, there were several storage lots where owners would store their holiday trailers, off-road vehicles, recreational vehicles (RVs), boats, and other vehicles. Driving by these lots at any time of the year, you see hundreds of stored ‘toys’ parked among a sea of white – rows upon rows of holiday trailers. I always found it fascinatingly wasteful that so many people own these ‘toys’ and use them so infrequently. All of them sit for months and years at a time in a lot, slowly withering away. So, the common thing to do is to purchase some toys, pay a storage fee to have them sit in a lot for 358 days of the year, and convince yourself that you require a heavy-duty pickup truck to haul the toy from the storage lot to a campsite twice a year. When I was growing up, this seemed normal to me, and to many of my friends, it is still normal to live this way. From my perspective, much of this is caused by wanting to ‘keep up’ with what others are doing, rather than considering what is best for you and your family, and what is logical.

By reconsidering my ‘needs’, I realized that I do not require any ‘toys’ to be happy, nor do I require a pickup truck. I sold my pickup truck and purchased a small car several years ago and told myself that whenever I required a pickup truck for something, I would simply rent one for the duration of my requirement. To my surprise, I have not needed any pickup truck in seven years. I have changed my lifestyle to reconsider my needs and, as a result, simplified my ‘needs’ to a simple car. Don’t let unnecessary desires prevent you from achieving your financial goals.