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We have 3 vehicles, one for me, one for the wife, one for the vacation home that stays there. Then we drive one of the home vehicles to the vacation home so the both of us has a vehicle to drive. Works well.
I've got a situation that appears to be unique: we went from a one-car family during our entire marriage/working careers to a two-car family in retirement. And the reason for that is two-fold: For one, we lived for many years on the edge of downtown Bethesda so we had 100+ restaurants to walk to, movie theaters, bars, etc., not to mention we were 4 blocks from the Metro (subway) Station so we could take it all around and through the DC-metro area. And frankly, going by subway was usually more convenient than driving and trying to find a place to park anyway. The second reason is that my wife didn't even have a valid driver's license anyway! She had gotten one when she was a teenager, let it expire, and had never bothered to renew it.
It wasn't until we retired and moved to Las Vegas in 2010 that she became interested in driving again. Vegas doesn't have much of a mass transit program and she wasn't going to wait at a bus stop when it's 115! She also didn't want to be wholly dependent on me for her transportation needs. So she got her DL and we got a second car for the first time. And that led to another first: buying and driving a four-door sedan. For 30 years, I had only owned and driven sports cars or sporty coupes, but since we were getting quite a few visits from family and friends, we decided to buy a more practical car that could fit 4-5 adults.
When we moved to Miami Beach in 2013, we sold the older car, packed up the newer sedan, and then drove cross-country. Once in Florida, we reverted back to a one-car family for awhile, but eventually began shopping for a second car once again. In fact, we bought two cars within a month of each other in 2014: a new model of the sedan (in order to be able to chauffeur my parents around town) and a sports car. My wife was involved in an accident which totaled the sports car a couple of months ago, so we just replaced it last month with a two-seater convertible. We owned a couple of convertibles during our time in DC, but it is much more fun driving it in the winter in Miami Beach!
So the bottom line is that we first became a two-car family in retirement, and mostly likely we'll be staying that way for the foreseeable future.
In retirement, we're both busy doing our own things.
Many times we are going to separate events at the same time. We therefore need two cars. It's also nice to have two cars when one of them is in for service.
Besides, they are both fairly new and paid off and as retirees, our car insurance premiums are very low.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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We have three currently, my Challenger for daily driver, my wife's more economical car, and my truck for when I need it. When we retire in 3-4 years I expect to keep them all, which will be paid off and under 100k miles, and buy a 4th, a classic to restore for fun. I have done two before, but don't have time or space for it now. When we retire I expect to move to a less expensive area and have multiple garages, even if I have to build one. Cars are not for getting somewhere for me, they are also a hobby, a toy, and source of entertainment.
What I see in Florida is....I work for several people in senior communities and they ALL have one car.
In fact, they only get one parking space in the multifamily condo type units. The single family / connected "villas" (twins) have enough space in the two car garage if the cars aren't big, but I've never seen more than one car in them either.
In my 55+ we have a couple of snowbirds who leave a car here and end up having two cars but they never use them concurrently so I don't know why they even do that. They are ALWAYS together unless one goes shopping occasionally.
In fact, in the senior communities I notice almost EVERY COUPLE walks around holding hands in the hallways going to dining or to events so they enjoy being together.
Also for OLDER retirees, not everyone is comfortable driving.
That being said, I have a 94 year old client who keeps a brand new Cadillac and hasn't driven in a decade. He was just talking about buying a new one. His home health aides drive him around in it.
We've been retired for 7 years, moved to retirement state almost 4 years ago. We still have all our vehicles, 2 cars, plus one vintage El Camino, and 4 motorcycles. We are talking about getting a travel trailer and I thought DH was onboard to sell his El Camino (owned for 40 years) and get a truck to tow it with, but he just put a bunch of money into the El Camino, so....maybe not. We were going to end up with a truck and sell our two cars and get one "fun" car, like a Miata or something. If he doesn't sell the El Camino, I don't know what we'll do. I don't think we'll be taking that thing cross country camping, so who knows...we'll probably still have 3 cars for a while. Someday, we'll sell 2 of the motorcycles (the big ones), and keep our little trail bikes for fun. Maintaining our vehicles is a hobby for him, it's ingrained in who he is, so I don't pressure him to make changes.
We've got a large, newer SUV and an older 2-seat sports car. I probably don't drive the sports car more than 1000 miles per year ... and don't really need it (My wife doesn't really like riding it it either). We could easily get by with one car, but, I still enjoy driving the sports car occasionally and it doesn't really cost much for insurance, gas and repairs.
My concern has been that if we put a lot of miles on our upscale SUV, we will incur a much higher rate of depreciation -- than if we bought a 2nd larger car that we could comfortably drive longer distances. However, we are only driving the SUV about 10K miles per year --- so depreciation is not really that big of a deal.
We have our "city" car that we use around town (a little hatchback EV that gets between 75-100 miles, depending on season, on a $2.20 charge). For towing our 20' travel trailer and long trips we have a Ford truck. I have also rented a car when I needed to do a 300 mile trip and didn't feel like trying to maneuver a large truck around downtown San Francisco.
We have a limited taxi service in town, extremely limited public transportation and Uber/Lyft etc aren't available.
Previously we've had 3-4 cars - a "fun" summer convertible, two commuter cars, the large supply-hauling vehicle (usually a truck).
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