My TCO for my 2003 Toyota Sequoia has been $70 a month. I paid $8,000 for it 3 years ago and have paid $500 in maintenance (standard scheduled maintenance plus $60 in repairs). I pay $23 dollars a month for liability insurance. Depreciation has been approximately $1,200 (at worst). I'm not so sure I'd own anything but a larger (safety) Toyota (reliability) that old, but just wanted to provide some anecdata.

> Your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for a cheap used car can't be $100/month. If you look at Kelley Blue Book or similar websites, they'll tell you that even super cheap cars like that 2005 Ford Focus will still cost you $300-400/month, all included.

My personal econobox, which I've had for a bit over five years, has so far run around 0.17 cents per km, or $155/month, with around 12,000 km/yr. Fixed costs (insurance, registration) add about $75/m.

That sounds about right -- my rule of thumb is that $200/mo TCO is about as low as you can reasonably go "in general".

My last two vehicles were

1. 2005 Chrysler Pacifica. Paid $16,500 in '07. Sold in '17 for $1,900. A few sets of tires, insurance premiums, and (gently) hitting a couple of deer put it around $225/mo over those 11 years.

2. 2009 Pontiac Vibe. Paid $14,500 in '11. Still have it and it's only needed minor repairs (knock on wood). Sitting around $250/mo TCO, but it's still worth a few thousand.

YMMV.

So you either won the car maintenance lottery or DIY'd it and disingenuously priced that at nothing. Good for you -- but not good for planning purposes.

No, neither of those? My per-km costs have been about 30% maintenance, which is pretty reasonable for a $10k econobox between 60k-120k km. I DIY the easy stuff like oil changes or tire rotations, but that bill includes several major maintenance items where I paid dealership labour rates. (shock/strut replacement, broken filler flapper, brake job, water pump replacement)

To be clear, the $155/m is for marginal costs, total marginal+fixed is $155+$75= $230/m.