Do other couples share both cars rather than having one each?

[OhMyGodItsSoGood]

I saw a post on Instagram that was astonished about a set up where a married couple don't have their “own” cars but instead both just share two cars and take whichever one they want when they need it. Monsters, apparently.

I was astonished at the poster’s astonishment because this is our set up and it genuinely didn’t occur to me that it was weird or unusual. We have two cars between us, one big, one smaller, and we just take whichever is more suitable at the time (usually whoever has the kids takes the bigger car). We don’t have or think of them as belonging to either of us.

Opened up a discussion in the WhatsApp chat with my pals. They all think it’s weird too and I am a bit 🤯

I mean it’s not a big deal, it works for us, I’m not upset or worked up. I’m just curious as to whether any other couples prefer this set up?

My car has this awesome feature where you can set up the driving position for 2 people, so you open the door and press the button that corresponds to you and it electronically puts the seat back into your position before getting in. DH no longer has to squash himself in the seat to push it back, and I don’t get annoyed at not being able to get back to my perfect position 🤣

We share one car. I use public transport for work so not really necessary to have two.

My sister and her DH share a car. One car 😱 I'd never love anyone enough to share my car with them. I could probably just about cope with your arrangement of pooling cars.

I'm sure this has been posted before, even down to the exact working of the OP. I had a very clear déjà vu when reading it.

Anyway, I have mine, DH has his. His is low down and mine is high up. We both occasionally drive the other for a quick trip but we prefer our own. If I drive DH's, I have to adjust the seat settings so much to be able to drive it that be hates having to reset it all so I tend not to. He has a long commute so if he doesn't get the settings quite right, he gets a bad back.

We have our ‘own’ cars but will chop and change occasionally if required - his is a big truck and mine is a small sporty thing, I’ll take his if I’m doing a dump run, or taking all the kids somewhere, or if mine is in the garage I’ll take his to work (he also has a van so can drive that if I need his and mine isn’t available).

No we have our own cars that we pay for, pay the insurance etc. We will swap cars if needed though and we often take mine on family days out (more practical) and DH usually drives. So mine is more of the “family car” I guess.
I mainly wouldn’t want the faff of moving the seat all the time - and I have my sunglasses in my car 😂

Divorced now but when we were married it was very much a case of having our own cars. Mainly down to my love of anything small and quirky, so I had classic minis and later on Smart ForTwo convertibles, and ex-DH liked his large cars with gizmos and gadgets. We hated each other’s cars so would never drive them.

If we had to go anywhere as a family of 3 then we’d obviously take the big car but if it was just me and DS, I’d use mine.

we have our own cars. Though, up to recently, we’d both take whichever was more convenient. Then dh bought Electric Volvo and I just can’t get my head round it and have only driven it twice since Christmas….i need to get over myself.

DH is considerably taller than I am and has a very large, long luxury car. I have a small Yaris where the top of his head grazes the inside roof. The only time I drive his car is when I need to make a long motorway journey.

We have always had separate cars and even if we had two of the exact same cars, we would have one each.

DH needs a sticker in his for his work security / car park. I'm not faffing around swapping that over every day.

I've got a Mini so if we are going somewhere where parking might be tricky we will take my car. I'll drive it though, it's my car 😅

Yes, we just share whatever is in the driveway and always have. We can choose whoever gets there first now we have a side by side driveway. When the DC were small we had a tandem driveway and had 2 sets of car seats, so there was no faffing in the mornings.

We have a bigger car and a smaller car and we share them both. It’s totally irrelevant to us whose name each of them are in.

This works for us because:

Only one of us drives to work, the other takes the train. So there’s not a regular “one person takes each car daily”

Neither of us are particularly bothered about cars apart from having ones that are reliable, nice enough to drive and work well.

We specifically wanted one v large car for family camping / converting to 7 seater for taking friends/family about, and one v small car for nipping about locally and teens learning to drive. So it would be unfair to assign such different cars one to each person.

We have joint finances so all insurance / petrol etc comes out of the same pot.

Big car smaller car never bothered who takes what tho hubby will take smaller to work incase I want to go out with kids

Yeah I guess in many cases it will depend on finance set up, I can understand having your own car if your finances etc are all separate and you’re paying all the costs for it.

We just put everything into one joint account. Everything goes into that and everything comes out of it (some of my friends think this is weird too).

We do this. We have a big electric one and a small petrol runaround. Whoever will be driving the furthest will take the electric one

Yes, one small one bigger. Whoever has the kids takes the bigger car.

We did that for a while. DH was a late learner so I was the only driver for the first 20 years or so. Then we ended up with a big car (Tiguan) and a little car (Fiat 500) that we each used according to what we were doing. It got annoying though as DH dinged the car a bit when parking (walls, bollards etc). He used to adjust the seat every time he drove after me, even though I could perfectly comfortably drive in his driving position for short trips, but he never remembered which button was forward/back so he kept adjusting lumbar support and other stuff and I ended up with low level backache. Then lots of minor things, like he would finish off my chewing gum and not replace it, he put a water bottle in the side pocket on top of my sun glasses and damaged them. So I sold the Fiat and bought another Tiguan and we stopped swapping cars around.

That was an over a decade ago so the cars have changed since then but we still have our own and hardly ever drive the other. It's kind of a shame because it makes much more environmental and financial sense to have one bigger car for long journeys and moving stuff and people and another cheap, efficient, short-distance car, but it didn't work for us.

We technically own a car each but we drive whichever is most appropriate own our needs. DH's car is over 20 years old so gets used for things like trips to the tip and mine is brand new so mine gets used for things like going away for the weekend. I don't need mine for work but even if I did there's no parking by the office and DH drops his car into the work's car park and collects his delivery van.

Until recently I had a 7 seater but now I have a small hatchback. DH has decided that he will continue to drive his car - a small car too- until it has to be scrapped and at that point he will get a larger car. There's only 3 adults in the family, but we miss the extra boot space with 2 small cars.

We're the same OP, each of us owns one car on the documentaton, but we split the costs for each and swap around a lot. Both cars have kids car seats etc, but one is bigger, has cruise control and more boot space, whilst the little one is nippy and fits in really tight parking spaces. So it's a case of taking the right one for the right journey.

We only had one car between us for nearly 10 years though, so we're very used to sharing.

Technically, I own both our cars. If it's not for something specific, we each take whichever car is easiest to get off the drive, DS's car is often parked in front of one or the other.

Even when I retired and we only really needed one car we still kept 2. And yes we drive whichever car is suitable for the occasion. Dump run? His older car with bigger boot.
Grandkids? Mine because we then don't have to lug car seats in and out.
We both are each others named driver.
We both drive carefully so no problem.. but I'd never share a car with one of my family because her driving is awful.. (and never her fault!)

We used to share two vehicles , one smaller commuting car, and one people carrier . Whoever was going to work took the smaller , the one at home with 5 kids had the people carrier . But over the years , when the DC’s grew up and moved out, we didn’t need a larger vehicle anymore , and DH was hankering for a sports car, so when we had a windfall , he bought himself a performance car which I don’t drive mainly because I dont need to , and I got an SUV . We kept another car because we didn’t need to trade anything in, which is now the dog’s car because she moults like no tomorrow .

We tend to stick to our own cars purely because as DH is a foot taller than me it takes ages to readjust the seat and mirrors and steering wheel positions if we swap.
We were down to 1 car for 2 months earlier this year - it was frustrating to say the least!

We have the same set-up. My car is small, so if he’s just nipping round town locally DH will use mine, as it’s more cost-effective. We use his for longer journeys because it’s more comfortable and spacious.

We both have our own cars, bought with our own money. DHs is huge and expensive, I have never driven it. Mine is small and cheap, DS is learning to drive in mine.
I had lease cars for years from work but this is actually mine.