November 30, 2012

I wasn't really sure if I should take public transport or if I should buy a car. So I was talking to my father, who used to live there, which in should choose and he said that the public transportation in San Jose isn't very good so I would need a car. I tried looking for the average miles driven annually in San Jose, but nothing came up for that so I found the average miles driven annually for a female in California which is 12,004 (SOURCE). So monthly that would be about 1,000. I also found two cars that I was interested in. The first one was a 1997 Land Rover Discovery SE for $4,999. I liked that one because I've always like big black cars because they seem safer and nicer, but I realized that it would probably cost more because bigger cars use up gasoline quicker and they are probably more expensive to maintain, so I decided to go with my second choice. My second choice was a 1996 Toyota Tercel for $3,499. 

I used Geico to find the insurance cost which ended up being $60.94 per month, but they had a deal where it would cost $331.10 for six-months so I think I would go with that.  (SOURCE) I looked up my car and found that the miles per gallon were 32 (SOURCE), and the price per gallon of gasoline in San Jose was  $3.28 (SOURCE) So I divided the monthly mileage by 32 and found that the number of gallons I would use up in my car monthly would be 31.25 which would end up costing me $102.50 monthly. $75 would be put aside monthly for any maintenance my car would need.

I haven't been able to really update my expenses because my laptop has been getting fixed, but I have been recording them in a notebook. Yesterday I found out that I'm going to have to get another computer so that will be like another $1500 and hopefully I will be able to get all my files, including my personal expense spreadsheet, back.