The Rear End

One Car All Stars

living the one-car family lifestyle is easy ... if you’re me

Mike Paulus |

We never chose to be a one-car family. Unless your definition of “chose” is something like “not paying $600 to replace the foreign exhaust system on an old, rusty (and beloved) Chevy Nova because the whole car is worth less than $400 and it seems to be one sharp corner away from self-dismantling into pile of crusty metal.”

Then, yeah. It was totally our choice to be a one-car family.

My family just started out with one car, that’s all. I’d like to tell you that we’re choosing to stay that way, but unless there’s a giant metal tree somewhere nearby growing free Honda minivans, it’s not much of a choice. However, I firmly believe in my little, golden, ruby-encrusted heart of hearts that if buying a second car was a financial option for my family, we’d still have the guts to say, “Screw you, second car! (No offense.)”

That said, having only one car is great. As you can guess, one less car means one less car payment, one less insurance payment, half the cost in gas, half the cost in maintenance, half the pollution, and half the guilt of going six months to a year without running the stupid thing through a carwash. But what about the challenges of getting a family of two adults and two kids around town?

Well, for us, it’s not too hard. I’m the only one who has an office to get to every day. (My 3 year-old has yet to score a solid gig in telemarketing, no matter how many times we tell her, “Sweetheart, please remember to go make some money. Mommy and Daddy need to buy more Doritos.”)

So my advice is to have one adult in the family quit their job. BAM. Now you have one less place to drive and one less hand grabbing for the car keys. Easy, right? Also, our kids are too young to have anywhere else be, and their legs are not long enough to reach our car’s gas pedal, so their driving needs are nonexistent. So my advice to you parents out there is to not let your kids grow up. BAM. Yet another solution.


    But what if both adults need to be in separate places and neither of those places is home, you ask? Well, let me introduce you to your new best friends, Mr. Walking and Madam Biking.

I used to ride a bike to work and I loved it – until my bicycle got stolen by insidious bicycle thieves. And by “stolen by insidious bicycle thieves” I mean to say, “taken back by the generous friend who had lent it to me for over a year.”

You never think it’ll happen to you ... until it does.

Anyway, if you’re the adult walking or biking to work/appointments/the store/World of Warcraft Tournaments, then you’re reaping yet another benefit of the one-car family lifestyle: being less fat and stuff.

Another benefit: you get to feel better than other people! My family uses less gas than the average, attractive American family of four awesome people with great senses of humor – and that means we care more about Mother Earth than all the greedy, mean, petrol-chugging families of this great nation. And since we care more, we’re better!

In all (non-hilarious) seriousness, we don’t really feel better than other people, and that’s not a motivation for us, but if feeling superior is something you’re into, try ditching that second car and see how it feels. You’ll have lots to blab on and on and on about at your next cocktail party. (Bragging about your new car is so last century.)

Honestly, I don’t even know what the hell my family would do with another car right now. I mean, my wife and I could have a lot of fun drag racing through our residential neighborhood, the winner scoring a sweet foot rub with scented candles and soothing ambient music. But we’ve learned to survive without such frivolities. The real challenges will come when our kids get involved in more activities (soccer, swimming, telemarketing, etc.). And the really real challenges will come when they start driving, too.

Hopefully, by then, the oil market will collapse, and we’ll all be on bikes anyway. And then the tire market will take a major hit, and we’ll all be on unicycles. Either way, the Paulus family is driving ahead of the curve.