Here in Israel, cars are expensive and gas is very expensive, much, much more than in the US. While a car makes life so much more convenient, it comes at a price.

We’ve been living in Israel for thirteen and a half years and though we had a large family of ten children, didn’t buy a car until six and a half years ago. At that time, we were the largest family in our apartment building, and the only one who didn’t have a car. When we bought our home, we looked for a location with good public transportation and though it wasn’t as convenient as a car of our own, it served us quite well. We took our time in buying a car, not wanting the expenses of car ownership to sink our budget.

When we finally got a car, it was because life had become very difficult without one, due to the challenges of a child with special needs who had very little stamina for walking. The bus stop was less than a five minute walk from our home but it could take a half hour for him to walk home, and when multiplied by every time I needed to go somewhere with him, it had become stressful and draining. At that point, we agreed that having a car had become a need.

Fast forward to today, we are living in an area where the public transportation is irregular and infrequent. (I wouldn’t have considered living in a place like this if we didn’t already own a car.) We have minimal shopping and services locally, and though a small number of people manage without a car, it’s pretty much a necessity for living here.

For us, not only was one car a necessity, we needed two.

Last year, after we had a series of frustrating and expensive events involving our second vehicle, neither my husband nor I wanted to replace it. We brainstormed how we could manage with one car. We talked about what we needed the second car for, how we it it, when we used it, and how could we change our car usage so it wouldn’t be necessary.

We were able to work around most of the times we needed it, but the biggest factor that we couldn’t initially get around was my husband’s travel for work. He works in the center of the country once a week, and to get to the train that goes there, he would drive a car to the station, park it and then drive home after he got off the train on the way back. This made the travel manageable for him.

Taking a bus to and from the train station would add over four hours onto his day, between the longer travel time on the bus, and waiting for the bus after getting off the train (it runs only every two hours, and if you miss it by a few minutes, you have a long wait). That seemed unreasonable.

However, when we both agreed we really didn’t want to have another car, he agreed to try it.

It isn’t easy. It’s exhausting and time consuming. My husband leaves before 5 am and gets home at 8:45. Initially he asked me to pick him up from a bus stop fifteen minutes away, since there were more frequent buses running to that area. When that was too difficult (because there was no one to watch the sleeping children so that I could pick him up), he found a shul close to the train station. Now he davens maariv (evening prayers) and then learns during the long period of time he has to wait for his bus.

I’m not going to sugar coat it and make it sound all wonderful, because it’s not. He’s been out for sixteen hours by the time he gets home and that is a very long day. It may not be wonderful but it’s doable, and it eliminates the purchase, fueling, insuring, maintenance and repairs of a second car, and for the inconvenience four days a month, it’s worth it for us.

Finding ways to save will usually require you to first think differently about what you’re doing, and then do things differently. Different is going to feel uncomfortable and hard, at least in the beginning. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them.

Building up the money you save as a result of these choices will create freedom and decrease stress the longer you do it, and that produces its own positive reward cycle.

If you have a car and you’re struggling financially, you might want to consider if you really need that car. I know how much easier life is with a car, believe me, and I know how irritating it may be to consider even for a moment not owning that car. But if you can’t really afford it – and honestly you can’t if you’re living with a minus in the bank or with credit card debt – then the price of a car is not being able to have the peace of mind that comes when there’s some positive padding between your income and expenses.

Peace of mind may be invisible but it’s worth a whole lot.

Avivah