This year with the car
Well this school year will be very different. Until June the car did lots of short hops back and fore to Catrin's school to pick her up and drop her off. Now she's at lycée in the city and travelling by bus.
Since we pay for season tickets for bus and tram for everyone I am determined to use the car as little as possible - basically for the big shop and for Sunday. Maybe for Tuesday evening prayer meetings. Maybe not.
The immediate result of this has been a vastly reduced fuel bill ! We generally filled up twice a month at a cost of about 140€. So far in a week we have not even used a quarter of a tank, so we should see our monthly bill halved at least.
We also walk much more. Each time we travel instead of 2 yards to the car and two yards from the car we do 10 minutes to the bus stop then a bit more the other side. And you can read, chat, look at the scenery and generally have a much nicer time in the bus and tram and rush around less.
Since the car is also becoming less and less reliable this is very good news !
It opens two possibilities :
1) that we use the money saved (if it isn't swallowed up by other expanding bills !) to finance a loan for a smaller, more reliable car.
2) that we give up owning a car and save on insurance etc. as well, using a Autocool pool car for Sunday trips to Blaye and relying on trams and buses for everything else.
We'll see, but so far so good !
Since we pay for season tickets for bus and tram for everyone I am determined to use the car as little as possible - basically for the big shop and for Sunday. Maybe for Tuesday evening prayer meetings. Maybe not.
The immediate result of this has been a vastly reduced fuel bill ! We generally filled up twice a month at a cost of about 140€. So far in a week we have not even used a quarter of a tank, so we should see our monthly bill halved at least.
We also walk much more. Each time we travel instead of 2 yards to the car and two yards from the car we do 10 minutes to the bus stop then a bit more the other side. And you can read, chat, look at the scenery and generally have a much nicer time in the bus and tram and rush around less.
Since the car is also becoming less and less reliable this is very good news !
It opens two possibilities :
1) that we use the money saved (if it isn't swallowed up by other expanding bills !) to finance a loan for a smaller, more reliable car.
2) that we give up owning a car and save on insurance etc. as well, using a Autocool pool car for Sunday trips to Blaye and relying on trams and buses for everything else.
We'll see, but so far so good !
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