Posts tagged with "car"
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Ignis Fuel Economy
It has been about 9 months since we purchased our new car and we are enjoying it. I was curious about the mileage figure published by ARAI for Ignis. So I decided to check out the real life mileage. Of course everything is an approximation, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Your mileage (pun intended) may vary, yada yada disclaimers apply here. Going back to the point, the ARAI number for Ignis is about 21 KMs per liter. The testing is done under laboratory conditions with different speeds under simulated road conditions. No air conditioner is used, there are no traffic signals etc. So you can think of it as ideal conditions. You should also keep in mind that they test various speeds simulating city and highway drives.
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Vehicle Inflation
Since I recently purchased a new car, my insurance has shot up quite a bit. I thought this would be a good time to look at my vehicle insurance inflation before the major jump. As I always say, it does not matter what the government published inflation numbers say, the question is how much is your personal inflation. Your corpus, the safe withdrawal rate and thus your financial independence depends on your inflation. So it is always a good idea to know your inflation numbers. In the past, I’ve written a few posts on our inflation of a few things. Here are some of them if you are interested:
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How I Funded Purchase Of A New Car
If you have been following my past few posts, you already know that I purchased a new car. You might also recall that the budget I set for the new car was Rs. 6 lakhs. In this post I want to answer some of the questions that might be popping in your mind including why I have a specific budget and how I funded it. I have just one portfolio which is my retirement corpus. I don’t maintain different portfolios for different goals, because I only have one goal which is to stay retired for ever :). The retirement corpus is supposed to fund all expenses in my retirement. It could be any monthly expenses like food, petrol, electricity, kids expenses etc. Or it could be some big annual expenses such as buying a car or painting the house etc. If you want more details, I suggest you follow the links above and read about my expenses first. I explained everything in detail.
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Goodbye Alto, Welcome Ignis
This is the continuation of my previous post on buying a new car. As we established, I decided to buy a new car instead of an used car. The reasons are mentioned in my previous two posts. After having shortlisted a few interesting new cars, I test drove a sample from each manufacturer that I was interested in. In the end, I kept coming back to Maruti cars for one big reason – the engine. Of course, the main reason that only Maruti came out on the top in engine quality and not the other Japanese brands like Honda or Toyota is because I excluded them as they did not fall within my budget. If you didn’t already know, I kept a strict budget of Rs. 6 lakhs for buying a new car. I will get into the reasons as to why only Rs. 6 lakhs in my next post.
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The Hunt For A New Car Begins
If you didn’t already know, it was time for my almost 15 year old Maruti Alto car to be re-registered. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I was contemplating whether to renew the registration or buy a used/new car altogether. From what I gathered, it will cost me some 30-40K on my old car to get it registered for another 5 years. The problem was that I was not sure that it will pass the fitness test even with all the repairs. Moreover, the new registration is valid only for another 5 years. I felt it may be better to sell the car and buy another used or a new car instead of spending the money on it. Then I faced another problem which tipped the scale in favor of buying a new car. First, I could not find a decent used car. Second, I found that it was not easy to sell my old car.
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Bought A New Car
I went against my own advice and decided to buy a new car, although I advice everyone to buy an used car. I am a hypocrite. There, I said it. Not just that, but I don’t even follow another advice I often give to everyone which is that they should go with 70:30 split for their equity and fixed income asset allocation. You already know that I don’t follow that rule. So what is my excuse to buy a new car this time? Continue reading to find out. But before we get started, I want to let you know that this is my first new car. Before this I purchased 3 cars and all of them were used cars. If you include Mrs. re-ynd, that is 5 used cards before buying a new one. So this is something really special for us.
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My Case Against Electric Cars
In a previous post I mentioned how it did not make financial sense to buy an EV for my use case even with all the government incentives. In this article I will explain what other factors affected my decision to buy an electric car. Before I begin, I want to mention that like most things in life, some decisions are very subjective and personal. Take the case of home ownership. Some prefer to own a house and settle in one place. Others prefer the flexibility of moving around and not having to worry about repairs and general maintenance of the house. We all know which makes more financial sense, still we might prefer one over the other purely because of our personal taste.
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Gasoline vs Electric Car Ownership Cost
The car that we currently own was manufactured in 2007 which we purchased in 2011 as an used car. It is now almost 15 years old. The time has come for re-registration. So I was wondering if I should go for the fitness test and get it renewed for another 5 years or if I should simply sell or exchange for a new car. Seeing how there is a lot of excitement in the electric car arena, I was wondering if I should go for it. Although battery EVs are sold on the premise that they save environment I don’t really buy that. No one really knows how much pollution is generated to build the car batteries. Excavating all the rare minerals, transporting and manufacturing of the batteries might cause a lot of pollution. It may not be CO2, it could be some other pollution we just don’t know yet and they still could be as harmful or more harmful than the green house gases. And lets not forget the human rights violation and child labor involved in excavating some of the rare minerals.
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Vehicle Insurance Craziness
There are many reasons one could think of when choosing a good car, and one of them could be insurance. Being a minimalist, I see car as a thing that takes me from point A to point B safely and protecting me from the elements (I was not like this before becoming a minimalist though). So whether it is raining or too hot, windy or dark, my vehicle should let me go from one place to another, assuming I have sufficient driving skills. For others a car could be a status symbol or it could be a shiny new toy with lots of bells and whistles. Have you heard about the refrigerator and foldable table in your car, or the wipers for your headlights? Well, some features do improve safety, but others are just gimmicks.
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Sold My Car!
I might have mentioned in passing on this blog that I own three vehicles. Now, having started on my minimalist journey, I have been wanting to get rid of an expensive and yet not so used car. And that finally happened yesterday! It is sort of a bitter sweet moment really. On the one hand I feel like a part of me is gone now and all I am left with are the memories. On the other hand, I am happy to have reduced "stuff" from my life. Read on to know the whole story.
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