Our mobile money pits: The true cost of cars

Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz-Fernandez, authors of the 2009 book Carjacked, wrote a nice piece on the costs of car ownership in the US.

Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz-Fernandez, authors of the 2009 book Carjacked, wrote a nice piece on the costs of car ownership in the US. Although the private expense is widely known — an average of about $7,300 a year per vehicle as of 2010 — the authors offers many specific examples that put the cost into context for individuals and the nation.

"Transportation swallows one out of every five dollars earned by the average American family, double the bite it took in 1960" they explain. "This increase alone could account for much of the plummet, over that fifty-year period, in the household savings rate, which by the aughts had skidded close to zero."

The costs are particularly hard on those who are less well off. "If the costs of cars for middle-class families have become largely unsustainable, those costs are immediately and profoundly crushing for working and poor families," they write.