One of my engineer passengers has a Prius. If I understood him correctly, all the savings he got in gas were exchanged for the new battery (batteries?). No real cash savings. I don't know anything about the costs (real-life, not just upfront) of making and disposing of batteries. Just tossing it out.

Personally, if you've got one good family vehicle, that should be enough. You usually take the train to work, don't you?

Sue

No, I have a 40 minute drive to a bus stop, and then 2 hours on the bus. The last parking space fills at 6:00 AM, exactly, so I have to be there before 6AM. I can't drag the whole family out of the house to leave at 5:15 AM, and I don't get home until 6:00 or so - exactly in the middle of the dinner prep time - so the drive to and from the bus is what it is.

As far as the Prius & the engineer.

I notice that all the people who provide "expert" opinions on hybrids don't own them, drive them or pay for them. I know people who have had hybrids from generation 1, and NOT ONE has told me it wasn't 100% worth it in terms of costs, maintenance and all the rest. Even with Battery replacement.

And, dare I say, there's more to the decision to buy a car than what I spend now - what will it cost my children in terms of what I leave of a messy earth for them. Mileage matters a lot to me, an so do emissions.

As far as leasing and new vehicle warranty, thats nice that someone else takes care of it, but vehicles never break down when the dealer service department is open, they wait until a weekend or holiday and then you have to have it towed to the dealer, find a rental (paid for by them or not its still a pain to transfer everything over), etc. To me thats like saying you know a storm is coming but your going to wait for FEMA to take care of you. I've had a couple broken parts on my non warranty vehicle, one was a fuse, simple enough to replace after I had overlooked it the first time and pulled and replaced the starter, other was a flat tire which I fixed with a plug kit and since I have a full size spare was able to drive the 250 mile trip home easily.
Keep your older one and keep maintaining it. Any small parts you can always buy extra. Find out why your transmission is failing multiple times, maybe its running hot, add a gauge and see then add an external cooler.
Now is a really bad time to buy a new vehicle, the price of fuel keeps going up and many more hybrid/eectric/alternate fuel vehicles are in the works so your better off waiting and see what ends up being our fuel source in the long run.

Do you have almost a three hour one-way commute?

Here is advice that I was given early on:

Live close to where you work.

It saves, money, time and your sanity. My brother almost commuted away his kids's childhoods. He had a 2.5 hour commute one way to work. Then he found a job 10 minutes from home that pays more money. Now he spends an extra 5 hours per day with his family and pockets the savings from the commute too.

The second job he took is not quite as "prestigious" as his past job, but I can tell that he and his family are happy with the change.

I see the move closer to work solution a lot, but the problem is that isn't always possible. I'm trying to find a place closer to my work now which means selling my 60k house and buying a 160k house. Which I could do, except taxes also triple when I get any closer to work so that puts those homes closer out of budget. everyone wants to live close to work and that drives the prices up.

I just re-read this. Did you actualy get a flush, or just a fluid and filter replacement. I see a lot of places trying to talk people into a flush and with an older tranny it always does more harm than good.

Also if you are looking at suburu, a lot of people around my parents (way in the country) bought them thinking perfect a 4wd car. Now a lot of people are selling them because they AWD and underpowered for the hills so the gas mileage isn't much better the trucks and SUV's the replaced. Then they found the maintenace cost is higher, car suspension gets knocked out of alignment easier, timing belts instead of timing chains so you have to tear into the engine often to replace the belt along with a bunch of other parts. Then most people kept their suv/truck for when they needed to haul something so the cost of isuring another vehicle ate most of the gas savings. So in the mountain states like WV, MD, PA there are a bunch of used ones for sale really cheap.

With this as your starting point, I agree.

Here is more advice that I was given early on:

Whether you believe that you CAN or believe that you CAN'T, you are always right.

This applies in survival situations just as much in running your day-to-day life.

If your life depended on finding an affordable home closer to work, do you feel comfortable that up to this moment that have you have done everything possible to make it happen? My guess is that you are a survivor and if your life really depended on it, you would figure out some way to pull it off. Real estate turns regularly. Unless you are looking every day, there is always more property to look at. You never know when a bargain distressed property will hit the market.

Yea, I'm sure its not impossible. I just neet to find the repo'ed house for 120k in the area with the 160k+ houses. The hard part is selling my current house, we just took it off the market for a month after one year of being on the market.

Martin,

Let me reinforce your decision to keep your Jeep. Even the cost of a new motor is less expensive than a whole new car. Same goes for the other biggies. As long as you can keep the body in good shape (salted roads, GGGRR!) just continue to budget a car payment anyway as a way of getting ready for a new motor. Once you build up the necessary "payments" any additional "payments" made into the budget can go towards vacations and other things. I think you are on the right track.

I understand the commute thing. When I was performing in a theater company in Morrisville we had a couple of guys that commuted to The City every day, 2 hours one-way. They loved the Manhattan wage and PA cost of living differntial.

MoBOB

Since I don't know much about those batteries that power the hybrids, I did a little googling, and found some interesting stuff.

"Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage"
http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188

"Pragmentalists vs Environmentalists (Part 1): Prius: Green or Greenwash?"
http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/Hybrids.pdf

This article equates a Prius with a Gucci handbag: they may be popular but people are always gullible to good advertising. This article also mentions the 'flex-fuel' cars: "It (Prius) and its cohort hybrids are unlikely to make 50% penetration of the new car sales worldwide (or US) anytime soon. Flex-fuel cars went from under 5% of new car sales in Brazil to over 75% in less than three years because they don't cost any more than a regular car. They are projected to be 50% of GM, Ford, and Chrysler’s new car sales by 2012 in the US."

I am not familiar with flex-fuel cars, but I hate buying a new car so much I tend to wait until mine are almost composting back into the soil before I look for a new one.

Are flex-fuel cars available (or legal) in the U.S. at all?

Sue