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?

Yes- two cars, both needed to commute to work. Neither locations realistically commutable by public transport and certainly not with school and nursery runs included.

We have an old estate car that we use for long journeys, camping, shifting big stuff etc. Used rarely tbh. I have a little tin can that I use to drive the 10ish miles to work and back each day. Costs peanuts to run. I bought it because driving the ‘big car’ to work would be inefficient and expensive.

If you live in a major city like london, the chances are one car is fine. Or none. But as seen on this thread, outside od that, its far easier and more practical to have a car for both partners. Dh uses his to commute. We live on the edge of a small town so, in theory, I could do a fair bit by public transport. But, for example, dd's ballet class is in a village 15 minutes by car... or two busses, a train and an hour (if lucky) by public transport. Its a no brainer.

DP has a car through the car scheme for his job (sales). I didn't have a car for years, including several years as a single parent to a young child and I've had my fill of relying on public transport or getting lifts from people. I love the independence that my car brings, being able to take myself to hobbies in the evening and weekends. Being able to drive myself to a garden centre still feels like treat and I've had a call for 8 years now. I could definitely get by without it but I would miss it.

Yes we have 2 because we live very rural

Were in the north west and public transport is awful
We have a car each need them for work and tasks and getting the kids from a to b

I'm always on home visits due to my job and he travels to clients regularly

We actually do (would fit 8 but we have four)😂 we also have our own lane off of the public road so no street parking. Sorry.

If I lived in the city we would use public transport but we don’t.
1 of our vehicles is a campervan and one is a classic ‘fun’ car . We don’t need more than two but we enjoy them and have the space.

We have a car each because we live rurally and both work. DH has a car allowance and does lots of travel. I managed without a car when we lived in and near a city and before we had children. I now need mine for when I do home visits for work.

Maybe just pay tax per person in the house, like poll tax then?

DH and I need to be in places
far from home at the same time, so we need two cars. Adult DS also has two cars. I’m not sure why, and have given up asking.

We have 5 🤣. One each for the husband and I for day to day, both work regionally and live fairly rurally, so no public transport. We have a teenage son who has his own car for getting to school and extra curricular activities. We have a campervan for holidays and my husband has a classic that he shows. Cars are our thing, you won’t find us lying on the beach in the Maldives

(oh and they’re all off road and on our drive / in our garage)

DH works shifts, I work in school, plus both need to be in different places for hobbies, grandchild & visiting elderly parents + DH keeps car immaculate and mine isn’t!

We have one car, and have done for many years. One of us has always used public transport for work, as have really good links where we have lived over last 22 years. We are not in central London, but in the suburbs so have rail and buses etc. on the very off occasion we can’t, one of us might use a cab, which is significantly less money per month than running another car. But we are very used to doing it this way.
We had a few months where I still had my old car after getting a new one. Worked out quite useful as my dad broke his hip, so kept the second one running for a while.

i think it really depends if you have good public transport options, and neither of us would ever drive into London for work.

Yes we do, so we can both get to work on days we both need to go.
We also live in the country with no public transport so it wouldn’t work if while one of us took the car to work or out at the weekend the other one and the children were housebound.
Of course we could make it work with only one car if we had to but it would make life very, very difficult where we live. Much less of an issue in London, where you don’t really need a car.

I read that as “one for each husband” 😂

Because we both need to get to work and we’re not joined at the hip. My partner plays a sport on Thursday night and usually one other weeknight he might go for a game of pool with his friends or pop round to his parents. At least once a week I go out for food or to the cinema with the girls. Often our social plans can fall on the same night so it would be such a faff sorting out who gets the car (if we only had one) and who should get taxis/trams/buses.

Because DH doesn't fancy an 8mile walk to work along rural, unlit lanes.
I work in the community and drive about 300 miles a week for work, in places that buses don't run.

I have my own car and DH who is car obsessed currently has four cars plus his two vehicles that he uses for work. He is not allowed to drive my car because all his are pigsty’s (plus he’s a smoker). All are owned outright and kept on our own property so not pissing off any neighbours by parking all over the street etc…

So he can go where he needs to go and I can go where I need to go. We are rural though and we have literally nothing within walking distance, apart from pub 😂 nearest town one way 13 miles, nearest town the other way 13 miles as well. I work 5 miles from home, DH in next village

When I lived in London I had no car but, you know, public transport. Here's a real example of what it is like to live outside a city. My commute was 10 minutes or 15 minutes at rush hour. Or I could have taken two buses and it would have taken an hour. Or I could have cycled up several extremely large hills and taken longer. My job required travel. So an irregular bus or a taxi from the office to the station to get the one train an hour which took me part of the way to my meeting. Then another taxi. Obviously with one train an hour there would be hanging around one way or another. A meeting in the next town along could take up the best part of a day.

We had new manager who had only worked in a city and was chin out about managing with public transport. Had a car within two months.

So you have a couple in a house and maybe a driving age child working or at college and each need a car. It really annoys me at the lack of understanding people from a city centric world have of real only a few miles away.

We could just about manage with one car but it would cause some logistical issues especially when DH works away as I would be left with no transport. We have discussed going down to one but felt it would cause to many issues especially as our parents lived a long way away and are all getting frail.

2, one each though to be fair mine is used very little. I've had it since new (my first ever new car) and 3 years later I've done just over a thousand miles... ! But I need it for emergencies and for when my partner is away.

We have a car each each. We are village based and trains are unreliable I am looking at you Northern.. We had one car when we worked in the same town. On a Sunday, every other train looks suspiciously like a bus.

We've only recently got a second car, but we got it because dd2 needed an automatic car to be adapted for her. We also have 4 drivers in the house.

I grew up in a one car family. My dad used the car for work and when my mum started working she worked evenings. There were times it was a juggle but we had decent buses.

DH and I have two cars though. We had one for several years but then I started to need one for work too because we needed to be in completely different directions at the same time. Partially the fact that we need two cars is because we live fairly rurally. If we lived more immediately on a train line then DH could likely commute by public transport and I could have the car but as it is, we both need a car. It is a luxury not to have to think about it though. It's been nice over the years to not have to limit what hobbies the kids can do (within reason) because actually different kids can do different clubs on the same night in different directions because we can divide and conquer. But I guess again that's due to where we live because if we lived in town then we could walk.

So maybe the reason we have two cars isn't actually because we both need them for work. It is because we live more rurally and therefore cannot rely on public transport.