Buying a second car to save gas

[kenny50]

Hello,



My primary vehicle is paid for but gets poor gas mileage so I’m considering purchasing a second car. I’m currently getting 15 MPG and drive, on average, 36 miles a day. This equates to 2.4 gallons a day. Gas prices are currently $3.40 per gallon. So I roughly spend $8.16 a day on gas.
The used car I plan on buying costs $3,000 and gets 26 mpg. I figure at this mph I’ll burn 1.38 gallons of gas a day at $4.69.
The savings would be $3.47 a day.
To justify the cost of the new purchase I would have to drive the car for 864.55 days to break even. That’s 2.36 years.
On top of that I paid $250.00 every six months for insurance on my first vehicle and $334.00 after adding the second vehicle. This comes to around $168 added to my annual costs. To make up for the additional insurance cost I would have to drive the car another 35.2 days before I could begin saving money.
Almost two and a half years to break even.



Can someone check my math to see if its correct? I'd also like to hear others folks opinions on spending money to save money on gas. Is it counter productive or a valiant effort?


Thanks for reading.

[Hungrycat7]

The math sounds good! With gas prices always fluctuating every number on there is going to change. Fuel prices will most likely rise again making your "breakeven" period even longer. This does also not include added maintenance costs to the new used vehicle.