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?

I don’t see why you’d ever need a 2nd car in your current life? We have only ever had 1. No need for another, we just coordinate.

No buses here so need 2 cars as he works 10 miles in the other direction to me.

We don't wfh and it wouldn't be possible to use public transport for work, so have 2. Depends if there's decent public transport (probably yes in London) and where/how often you work, and if anyone in the family has a disability.

We’ve always had a car each. DH needs his to commute so I’d be home and car-less as I couldn’t take him and pick him up due to my work.
We also have a DS and I pick him up from nursery at least twice a week, work in the office once and need to drive as part of my commute plus public transport here is unreliable but expensive.

We have 3. One for me and one for DP simply because we want to and don’t want to share. One the kids share because we don’t want to share with them and don’t want to downsize to be able to insure them

2 cars, because we work in opposite directions to one another and public transport here is awful.
When I lived in London I didn't even have a driving licence and had no need for a car. Same when I lived in Manchester.

I learned to drive when we moved rurally and had children. We got by with one car for about 5 years, but I have a job which necessitates driving across the county, so needed a second car.

We have 3, one is SORN, one is a project car for DH. We share the other one which I hate as ive just passed my test and its so long 🙈

Paid less than £6000 for all of them combined.

We live fairly rural so whilst there are buses, they aren’t regular, my dh works in quite an isolated place which would require 3 changes of public transport - driving however is quite simple. I work at various locations throughout my working day and sometimes need to carry heavy equipment about.

We each have a car because we work in different places and both drive as part of our work as well as to and from an office a couple of times a week. We are in a small market town in the country where buses and trains would get us to the office but not enable us to do the other journeys we make as part of our work. We also often do separate things at the weekend in different places. I can’t imagine (apart from living in London, when I didn’t have a car at all) being without the independence of my car.

We really needed 1.5 cars as I work from home and DH mainly from home. We have 2 as DS drives to work and now DD learning so we’ll have 2 cars between the 4 of us. Only works for the WFH situation and not looking forward to the bun fights when DD passes. In saying that we walk/cycle a lot so don’t use car that much even at the weekend.

Live in a semi rural location with shit public transport. Wouldn’t be able to get to work or to my son’s school without my own car.

We have two cars because we live in a one-horse town with monumentally shit public transport.

Yes. Tried to share a car recently but I hated it. I like to go where I want, when I want and didn’t like it when my OH was away at work with the car so I’ve got my own car now. Which was second hand and relatively cheap.

For work. We both use our cars as part of the working day

Hope this doesn't come as too much of a shock OP but some of us live/work outside of London. Which often means far fewer public transport options than you're used to.

We could probably manage with one car most of the time during the week. But at weekends we'd struggle unless we always wanted to do the same thing or take it in turns to go out.

At the moment the second car is old and cheap and manual so the young adult dcs can learn to drive/drive it. There's no way we're insuring them on our main car!

We have 2 cars. We live in a rural village and there's no public transport. I'm a SAHM at the minute so I guess, in theory, it would be possible for me to just stay home on the days DH goes into the office but that would be massively limiting for both me and the kids. I'd have to rearrange or cancel their hobbies, only run errands on days he's WFH and not go to the gym or see friends, check in on our parents etc etc. So yeah, we have 2 cars, he has a smaller one for driving to work and I use the bigger, family one for transporting the kids.

We have four between three. Terrible I know. DH has his everyday family car. I have my own city car. DD needs a car to get around to jobs, so she has a runaround. DH also has recently bought himself a fun classic car.

To be fair, I also used to have a fun classic car, but then I had kids and had to get a sensible one, sigh. We are quite a car obsessed family as you can see!

London DD had a car when she lived here, but now she is in London, doesn't need one, so she sold hers.

We have 2. Have always had 2. We live in a small village near Wales. No public transport, taxis have to be booked days in advance. We are retired now but have busy lives. We couldn't get to all the things we do ( many of them separately and in opposite directions) if we only had one car.

Same. We work in different areas, my DH works shifts so we need 2. They’re both ancient, had mine for 17 years, I think.

Me and my partner have a car each as we live separately but even if we lived together I would still keep my car despite working from home the majority of the time because when I do need to go to the office I use my car, if he went somewhere I would still like the option to leave the house, also if one of the cars fail mot or breakdown, then there's a spare to use while the other gets fixed. So basically if we lived together we could go to one car but I wouldn't want to, I like the convenience

We have 2 , my old one and my newer one , we could in theory manage with 1 but it’s useful having them both at weekends or if my husband needs to go somewhere in the week and I’m out .

We could probably get away with one if we were more strategic, but it would involve more thinking ahead and there would be clash points, especially at the weekend. One person couldn't go off and see a friend/do a hobby while the other took the kids to their activities or a party.

We’ve got 2. We can get by with 1 if we have to but much prefer it when we don’t. I usually have the nicer, bigger car and DP the cheap runaround but we’re both insured on both cars so he’ll take the better one if I’m not going to be using it

We have a car each because it is like bank accounts, mobile phones and door keys - it gives you freedom. We live just outside a city but the public transport is pretty terrible unless you want to go to the city centre (quite slowly). I stayed in Edinburgh once and was amazed at how many buses there were, and going to so many places!

Not everyone works 9-5 on a public transport route. We have shift workers and hospitality workers in this family and seeing as the sodding bus company have decided to cancel the bus routes……0..