Do you have two cars in your family? And if so, why?

[Homeiswherethedogsare]

Would love my own car one day once I get over fear of driving (another topic) but realise it woukd be a waste of money as I work in central London and don’t need it much apart from the odd days in the weekend.
DH uses the car every day to go to work.
Curious to know, do most families have multiple cars and if so why?
We don’t have a big budget for cars so maybe it would be better to have one nicer one than 2 old and average?

Sharing a car has always worked for us. We also use bikes/ bus / walk and very rarely taxis if needed.

2 cars between 3 drivers. Live rurally, no public transport and we need to get to different places.

Zero need for two cars in a city. Street clutter & we walk or cycle.

No because we live in a very central city location, so one is fine

We have two cars, but we did once fit 14 on our drive when we were hosting an event. Hope that helps.

DH has to drive around the country for work and we live rurally so I need a car when he's not here

When I was on Mat leave, having two cars was a godsend as OH needed his for work. We are debating whether we need two once our youngest starts school but being without a car on my wfh days does fill me with a little bit of dread i.e. if I want run errands during my lunch, pop to the gym etc but ultimately we probably will decide to go down to one, as financially and practically will make no sense having two. School holidays might be tricky but I might hire a car for a day or two or just drop him off at work and pick up.

@VerinMathwinthe driveway of a previous property was a huge rectangle and not at first glance connected to the main house
DH had around ten cars on there and the number of times I found randoms on there inspecting the cars thinking it was a car lot 😅

We have 4 cars at home currently. One is DS1's and he is at University but has nowhere to keep it there but he uses it regularly when he's at home. I have one and DH has two, a company car which is his daily drive and a old wreck priceless classic in the garage that only comes out on sunny days and is a hobby really. DS2 has a car too but he can keep his at University so it is at least currently not cluttering the drive up. If we lived somewhere with good public transport we would almost certainly have fewer vehicles but where we are, being able to travel independently is fairly crucial. It's10 miles to the supermarket, a similar distance to the doctor or dentist,40 miles to the mainline railway station and there is no bus service through our village at all.
Since I retired I use my bike more often than I use my car actually but when I need my car I really do need it. If we absolutely had to I suppose DH and I could share but it would be difficult, especially as DH works away from home quite a bit. In fact I know what it would be like as I was unable to drive for nearly a year after an accident a few years ago. It was a logistical nightmare and being totally dependent on other people did my mental health no good at all. Why would we make our lives - well, my life really - unneccesarily difficult given we can afford our own cars and have enough space? People often say "well you could just get a taxi" but that isn't always quick and easy in rural areas either. And say I ordered a taxi to the dentist, it would almost certainly come from and return to the town where the dentist is so would do twuce the mileage than I would driving myself. Not exactly the environmentally friendly option!

We have 3 cars. Mine, DPs and eldest daughters. We are too busy to be sharing cars. They are used daily by me and DP for work. Work and uni for eldest and by all of us for regular life at weekends.

just today, DP was working, eldest was working and I had stuff to do with middle DD that required driving. We couldn’t function with one car

When my DH was alive we had two. His old Bora and an ex demo Sharan. Four kids between us (three resident at our house) and while if really necessary we could have got rid of his, as he drove to the gym in the morning but was back before the school run and took the train to work, and it was uncommon for us to both need cars at the same time, but it happened on occasion. It was also nice if just the two of us not to have to take the big people mover.

We want to go to different places at the same time. I don't live in London so it's different obviously, but I can't imagine having less than one car per adult. Constantly negotiating and dropping each other to places, it sounds unbearable. If money was tight, my car is the last thing I'd give up. I'd get the cheapest car available and cut down on other things.

We had two because we both work in different places. DH took his to go to work and I am actually self employed, mainly WFH but I needed a car because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere at all.

DH then got a WFH job and we held on to two cars for a while but it was pointless and we were going weeks without one of the cars being used. Now we share one car.

No, I live somewhere with good public transport.

Why? What has a car or two, sitting on someone’s drive got to do with anyone else?

We have 3. All for work reasons. I go east for work, DH South and DS heads north. Semi rural living and no bus service early or late enough in the day.

It sounds like you don’t need 2 cars.
If you only need a car sometimes in the weekend it’s actually cheaper renting a car than owning one (insurance, tax, maintaining and petrol all add up to a lot).

We have just moved to 3 cars as dd is learning to drive and dh and I both have automatics. I am disabled and it’s a fluctuating condition so at times I can’t walk far and am absolutely exhausted.

We have 3 including my son! We all work but in different directions. For me if I took public transport, the quickest way would be bus, train, bus, but would cost me around £100 a week. The cheapest way would be to bus all the way but would take 2 hours and I wouldn’t get to work on time! The same goes for my husband and son!

3 in our house; son has van for his business, I work somewhere remote and DP works in the opposite direction.

We have 3 ( but a drive to fit them all in) both DH and me work, not always in the same town and different start/finish times. Eldest has just passed and driving to college ( in a town in totally opposite direction to either of our work locations) is half the time of getting public transport ( which needed one of us to drive them into town anyway) youngest has after school clubs that need getting to and dh is normally at work. No public transport runs the routes we need and all would involve multiple connections to travel 25 miles needed. I also like the freedom of having my own car if I want to go somewhere and not totally inconvenience anyone else

Yes, we have our own cars for work and because we do different things outside of work. My 21 year old and 18 year old have 3 cars between them. 1 each and a joint one!!

We have one car which DH uses to get to work, and I work a short walk from home in the local school (TA). Public transport is expensive and unreliable where we are.
We've only had one car for the last 6 or so years and adjusted ok. It does take more planning. The CofL crisis means I need to earn more, but will require the outlay for another (second hand) car.

Both have one as both need it for work and activities outside of work (even though we both work 5 minutes down the road in our main jobs). I am in Property Management so have to visit different sites and DH has another job in the evening he has to get to and takes DSS football training and attends school appointments and different bits and pieces and local public transport is inadequate here to get to the places we need to be on time.

In the next few years it’ll be three cars as DSS will need one too and both of ours are far too powerful to be insuring him on (we rather like our cars too, it’s an interest and something we take pleasure from given the hours we work and stress of our jobs).

If we lived and worked in London then no, we wouldn’t need more than one.

Technically. We have a car and then my husband has a work van but it lives at work. To be honest we never even use the car as we can both walk to work, it gets driven maybe once every ten days tops.