Car sits around not doing much?

James and his wife have two children and ditched their family car

The background…

Three years ago we owned a people carrier which we’d bought second-hand for £10,000. In fact when we first moved to the city we owned two cars and didn’t think twice about it.

We consider ourselves to be a fairly typical family with the same demands and pressures as everyone else. Perhaps we’ve always been quite open-minded, but we’re certainly not activists!

The dilemma…

I decided to do some sums and worked out the car was costing us around £342 each month. That’s a lot of money. Worse of all, it was spending several days a week sitting ‘off-street’, effectively in our front garden.

Sure, as a family we needed the ability to get around easily as and when we wanted, and our car provided this freedom – but at a significant cost. I decided to do something about it.

The City Car Club solution…

So we finally decided to get rid of the family car and join City Car Club – which at the time felt like a huge leap of faith. The idea of not having one just waiting there in the drive, ready for any whim or need, was scary. But the truth is I still do drive a car whenever I need one – in fact I have over 50 to choose from in the city and hundreds more across the UK.

We don’t have to think about whether the car needs a service or an MOT, or when the insurance premiums or road tax are due, or even whether the tyres need pumping. That’s all sorted by someone else. And I don’t have to look at something sitting in my front garden losing value.

We feel blissfully freed by not having a car and it’s saving us a fortune.