How expensive are vehicles?

It's something I never really thought of.  Other than the payments, and vaguely the cost of gas, but really, it never occurred to me how expensive vehicles are.  It's very obvious now that we have gone down to just one car, having sold Thak's truck a month ago.  Our budget, which once was so strained it was almost scary, is now pretty workable. 

It's no secret that Thak has always insisted on having a big truck.  I will never forget when we were planning on using his reenlistment bonus to buy a vehicle for him (when we first got married, we only had my car since he had to give his ex-wife EVERYTHING he owned in exchange for his freedom) and he literally said to me, "I don't care what it is as long as it's 4-wheel drive, has a big V8 engine, and is red, blue, or black."  My reply to that was, "Anything else?  Would you also like it to fly or have amphibious capabilities?"  As it was, I did manage to find an F150 that fit his specifications, and pay cash for it.  Four years later, when we moved to El Paso, he traded it in on the Dodge he had until recently.  I thought that was a dumb move mostly because he was insisting on getting out of the Army, and taking on another car payment at that point was a really bad idea.  I also didn't think that buying another gas hog was very smart under the circumstances.  I told him so, but he insisted that he needed it, and bought the thing anyway.  As it turns out, I had actually severely undershot how bad it really was.  When I ran the numbers on it recently, I actually even surprised myself with how much it cost us.  Look at this:

Payment: $300
Gas: $500/month
Insurance: $80 (we bundle our insurance, so we get a good deal)
 Then there are incidental things like oil changes, tune-ups, and stuff like that, which get REALLY expensive when you've got a giant engine like that, so figure in an average of $20-30 a month for that kind of thing if you average it out.

Basically, that truck cost us roughly $900 a month.

Now, for comparison's sake, let's look at what our apartment costs us:

Rent: $650
Electricity: $70
Water/Sewer: $50
Total: $770

That truck was costing us more than our home!!  That is absolutely insane!!  Now that it is gone, we find that we really are not as stressed as we were.  We can't just do whatever we want, and we're not rich, but school clothes for Erin and a trip to the Jacksonville Zoo next month aren't out of the question.

While the situation with one vehicle is sometimes difficult, logistically speaking, we make it work.  Sure, if I have an appointment in Statesboro (30 minutes west of here), and Thak has to be at work at the airfield (30 minutes southeast of here), that can create difficulties, but there's always a way, even if it means someone has to arrive to their destination really early.  The funny thing is, we find that we don't really miss the truck.  The one car serves us just fine. 

Thak will eventually buy another vehicle, mostly for hunting, but maybe an occasional commute (on those "appointment in Statesboro, needed at the airfield at the same time", days) but that will be a cheap truck from Craigslist, that we will buy in cash.  I think this has actually been a valuable lesson for him, that it's really not as simple as going to the dealership and taking what they approve you for, that there really are ramifications to that, and that any vehicle is more expensive than just the payment alone.  In other words, a low payment on a gas hog doesn't make it affordable, especially with gas prices the way they are these days.