After retirement, did your driving mileage change significantly? (beach, states, retired)
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If I can't walk or bus, I Uber which typically cost's a few bucks each way. In country trips, we hire a Van and driver International trips I rent a car.
I'm always asked by the insurance company, how many miles I will drive in a year. Seems like the premium goes up and up, if I say more than 7500 miles. How do you work it with your?. Where you put so many miles on. Do you just say you don't know how many miles will be driven?
Same system where I live, (SoCal). Needless to say, I pay a lot for auto insurance. But, I also have a clean record. Last moving violation must have been 20-25 years ago - maybe, can't recollect.
In general I find that I have more time to go places and do things since retirement. But I had a fairly short commute when working full time, so that affects the comparison. I haven't done as many over-night road trips as I thought I would, but I just did one up to the wine country in Northern California - about a 6 hour drive each way. Was gone three days and two nights and enjoyed visiting a cousin, a high school friend, and the Jack London State Historical Park.
My volunteer commuting is about the same weekly mileage as my full time work commuting used to be - the former is only three days a week versus five when full time, but the distances are somewhat greater.
The received wisdom that people save driving expenses when they retire does not apply to me. Whether that is so depends on a number of variables including whether one paid for parking at work (I did not) and of course the distance of the commute (mine was a short 13 miles daily round trip).
We have purchased three new vehicles since we retired in 2014. The cumulative total for the three is just under 55,000 miles. We put over 15,000 miles on other vehicles between the time we retired and when we sold them. So, over 70,000 miles since we retired in June 2014.
I am well past normal retirement age.I live in a resort area and work in a seasonal hotel driving back and forth to work. During the off season I may not move the car for days. My dogs love it as we may walk for hours,
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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When I am in USA (seldom) My driving increased a LOT, (my 'career' commute was short), retired... it is nothing to head off on a 2500 mile jaunt.
I have many more vehicles and unique purposes for them. (from hauling around my bulldozer, to mini RV, and plenty of evil 50mpg WVO burning VW's) I am making 3 more cars at the moment. I plan to take one to Europe, one to Australia and use for a season, then sell as collector car (Very hot market for USA vintage muscle cars and bikes overseas).
I locate my MH to a cheap airport hub, and fly back and forth and elsewhere.
I love to drive (child of a truckdriver) and I love to fly. I just like to GO!
Shuttling new Semi trucks, fire trucks and school buses would be a good PT job for me. 800 mile / day is a pretty typical trip. (my 'evil' car can go 1200 miles between fills)
I 'fly-drive' quite often, and even rent cars at home, cuz they are so CHEAP ($9.95 / day (Enterprise) , sometimes less on Hotwire) I got a $5.95/ day car out of Denver Airport, so went to Indiana while I was so close. Event at Studebaker Museum
I drive much less than I used to, because I had pretty long commute to work. So did DH. So, our daily driving is definitely lessened. I also suggested that DH tell our insurer that we no longer worked, so we could get a discount on our car insurance.
If you have a short commute now, then your driving might not change that much. Or, perhaps if you do a lot of car travel, it might increase.
We did buy a car for touring a few years ago. We do car travel, but not as much as I wished we had done earlier in our retirement. Do travel as much as you can afford early on, before you get too old to enjoy doing it.
Well, OP, we also have a RAV4, but we drive much less now that we're retired. We bought it new in 2007 and it just turned 69,000 miles. We've put absolutely nothing into it except tires, brakes, and one battery. I wouldn't even purchase an extended warranty, if I were you. And this is my 6th Toyota, so I know whereof I speak.
We now drive only about 3K miles/year, mostly because we live downtown. I've driven across the country numerous times, when younger, and, guess what? I'll choose a flight any day now.
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