Costs and pricing
Cost per mile calculator
Everything you spend on the car, divided by the miles you actually drive.
If you are paying it off, twelve months of payments. If you own it outright, roughly what it drops in value over a year.
What you actually spent last year, not what you hope to spend this year.
Fuel is not the expensive part
Ask most people what their car costs and they will tell you what they spend on fuel. For the majority of drivers fuel is nowhere near the largest line — depreciation and insurance usually are, and both are invisible because neither arrives as a receipt at a pump.
Adding everything up and dividing by the miles you actually drive produces a number most people have never seen. It is often two or three times what they would have guessed.
Depreciation is the cost nobody counts
If you own the car outright there is no payment leaving your account, so it feels free. It is not — the car is worth less each year, and that loss is real money you will feel the day you sell it.
A rough way to estimate it: what could you sell it for today, and what could you have sold it for a year ago? The gap is that year's depreciation. On a newer car it usually dwarfs the fuel bill.
What the number is good for
Cost per mile makes otherwise incomparable things comparable. It tells you what a longer commute actually costs, whether a cheaper car further away is really cheaper, and what a work trip costs to run before you decide what to charge for it.
It is also the honest way to compare two vehicles. A car with lower payments and worse economy can easily cost more per mile than the one that looked expensive.
Want a proper website for your business?
Your brand, your services, your phone number — a site that gets you called instead of scrolled past. Live in 10 days for $300, or your money back.
See what you get