<prompt> Human: Having just sold my car the other day, I thought Id share with yall the results of my financial retrospective in car ownership. The Details: I bought the car, an 06 Korean econo-special, from a small dealer for 8,431. I put 1,000 down and took out a loan with my local credit union for the remainder at a cozy 1.99. Over the course of 47 months, I put approximately 38,000 miles on the car mostly commuting to work about 14 miles one-way I also bike a lot, so it wasnt an every-day trip. Being a small 2.0-liter car, combined with my fascination with hypermiling techniques, I usually got about 31 MPGs. The Damage:Here is what I paid over the last 47 months, with some thoughts below: Total Purchase Price: 8,431 Selling Price: 2,000 Depreciation: 6,431 as a percent of total cost: 33.48 Service and Parts: 6,317 32.89 Insurance: 3,595.12 18.72 Gas: 2,306.29 12.01 Fees Registration: 395 2.06 Parking including tickets: 161.26 0.84 Per mile cost: 0.51 Per month cost: 408.65___Some Thoughts Overall, Im flabbergasted at the total; how in the hell did that tiny car cost me so much? A few things: I overpaid by buying at a dealership buy private party if youre comfortable doing so, I made the mistake a few times of having repairs done at the dealership likely would have been cheaper at a local garage. Even still, this was a fairly inexpensive car relatively speaking, yet when everything is added up, theres a whole lot more to the story. Monthly payments are only one chunk of the total cost of ownership. Often when people post budgets here they only list insurance monthly payment as their car budget when, from my experience at least, thats only about half the picture. I was also surprised that gas made up such a small portion of my costs. TL;DR: When you actually break down the costs of car ownership, it can be rather horrifying to realize just how expensive that mode of transportation is. Not to preach, but Im personally going to take this experience as a wake-up call to drive less and to take car ownership more seriously as a significant line-item on my budget. Anyone else have any ideas to make car ownership less expensive?  <response>: Selling it immediately after paying it off is not the most cost effective way to have a car. 