More Car Musings

It's looking more likely that I may end up taking my mom's jeep on this trip, but there are still a few issues. One is that my grandfather, though residing in an appropriate place, may not actually have an available parking space for me to use. So figure on paying to park it somewhere- probably about fifty dollars a month. The other thing is the gas milage. It has always been maintained that the Jeep gets very bad milage, but with little idea of exactly how bad. So when we went on a trip up north for my grandmother's birthday this weekend, we kept track. I'll spare you the math, but the upshot is that it gets about 21 miles to the gallon on the freeway. Which actually isn't all that bad. I figure the kind of car I was thinking about buying would probably give me about 30 mpg (possibly more, but I'm being conservative) (don't let the other people in Berkeley know). So, assuming gas prices are going to average about $2 a gallon for my 3000 mile trip... let's see... carry the two... That's about $100 more to take the jeep. That plus the parking costs (theoretical) still adds up to less than the $500 that I would lose buying here and selling there. Of course, there's still the problem of getting it back here...