We are a one car family

[Anonymous]

DH works from home and I work from home. We do not need two cars. We share one small SUV.

I am surprised this is not more common.

[Anonymous]

We raised two kids (now in college) with one Honda Fit.
Pre Covid we could WFM 1-2 days a week, but we took Metro, and traded off who drove to work depending on schedule for that day. Live in Alexandria, with jobs over the years in DC, MD, and VA. Maybe 1-2 times a year we would have a circumstance where we rented or borrowed another vehicle.
It can be done!

[Anonymous]

Do you live near public transportation? Do you have K-12 kids?

It is not common to be a one-car family because of typical US driving distances, conflicting itineraries, and US interest in purchasing luxury goods that increase personal convenience.

Sharing a car reduces personal freedom and requires some logistical sacrifices. People who make it work often have expensive supporting infrastructure that makes it possible. For example, my husband and I only had one car when we lived in a studio condo at a metro stop. That apartment is somewhere between $200K and $300K now. Not far off from the cost of my 3 BR house in flyover country.

Working from home is a small portion of the economy. And I think it is more prevalent among the affluent. New-car buying is also mainly for the affluent.
Historically, affluent Americans are not very prone to accepting underconsumption and less personal convenience. Think about how house sizes have grown and the rise of air conditioning as other relevant examples.

Your positive experience, if politely shared, might intrigue a friend or young couple just getting started, but don't expect a lot of converts.

[Anonymous]

We have only one car. It works fine for us. DH is mostly fully remote, I take the metro twice a week to the office (though DH picks me up most days). This week he had a work thing out in VA one evening and he took an Uber because I needed to pick our DC up after school from an activity. Today, I dropped off DC and DH at the metro so they could go into the city to go to a museum. Google said it was ten more minutes on the metro than it was to drive. It’s no big deal for us.

[Anonymous]

One car works for us since only DH drives. I don't have a license and we have 2 kids but so far have managed. Am I the only person without a license?

[Anonymous]

We had one car until our second child was old enough to have his own activities. We could make it work with one car, but it would mean skipping things that we can do easily with two vehicles.

[Anonymous]

We have one car, but we also have an e cargo bike (aka our “second car”), we take metro and buses a lot, and we try to do kid activities within walking or bus distance

[Anonymous]

…OK?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH works from home and I work from home. We do not need two cars. We share one small SUV.

I am surprised this is not more common.

I am surprised you’re surprised your situation isn’t more common. It’s unfortunate that you’re so privileged and out of touch with most people’s lives that you wonder aloud why everyone isn’t working from home just like you. If you can do your job from home, then someone else can do your job from India, Bangladesh or the Philippines - for far less money.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised there are people as dumb as OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One car works for us since only DH drives. I don't have a license and we have 2 kids but so far have managed. Am I the only person without a license?

Why don't you want to be independent?

[Anonymous]

We had no cars till our second was born, one one car till our eldest turned 18. I cycle to work, my wife gets the metro.

In an ideal world we would not drive at all. I hate cars and what they do to neighborhoods and people.

[Anonymous]

DP but there are a lot of reasons not to drive/have a license. My cousin, for instance, doesn’t drive because she has epilepsy. I know someone who had a really bad car accident, and now has too much anxiety about driving. I have a license and do drive, but I’ve made it a priority to live in a walkable area with good public transportation, so my family of four only has one car and we probably use it 1-2 days a week at most.

[Anonymous]

Most people don’t have two WFH parents or live near good transit. In the DMV I know a lot of one car families but elsewhere it would be tough.

[Anonymous]

It depends where you live and if you have kids who are involved in activities. Not rocket science here.