Since being together Marie and I have owned 2 cars. In Michigan I don’t think we could have gotten by with just 1 car, even when we were working in the same building. But in 2008 we downsized one of our cars to a Smart Fortwo to help save us money on our 30 mile each way daily shared commute. To date we haven’t regretted having the Smart. Since moving to Seattle we’ve noticed that we really don’t need two cars. I take the bus to work (I have yet to drive to work) and we now live within walking distance of restaurants, a hardware store, a grocery store, and pretty much everything we need. Plus we are active Amazon Prime users (really we order more stuff on Amazon than ever before).

So in this year, 2012, we decided to downsize even more; we sold our Ford Escape with the help of Uncle Peter. We have been a single vehicle household for about 2 months now. Not only are we a single vehicle household but our only car is a 2 seater Smart Car. We still make our Costco trip every other month or so and we still stock up on the same things we used to (it all fits in the Smart, with both of us on board). With the savings from not having to insure a second vehicle, we’ve decided that we can afford to have more stuff shipped to us, but really Amazon prime is covering the vast majority of the shipping cost on just about anything we’d normally run out to get and shove in our SUV. There will undoubtedly be something that Amazon can’t send us and we’ll have to shell out some cash for shipping or delivery, but I doubt it’ll cost us more than insurance for the extra car every year, not to mention maintenance and depreciating value of the vehicle… Overall, we’re very pleased to be a one car house and really I don’t think we could have done it in Michigan.