The best financial advice I can give you is to sell your car

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The best financial advice I can give you is to sell your car<br>What if the key to financial wellness isn't a budget app — but where you live?

Hanna Horvath<br>Apr 15, 2026

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Earlier this year, the New York Times published a piece marking the one-year anniversary of congestion pricing in Manhattan. They asked readers how the policy had changed their commutes, their routines, their lives.<br>I wrote in. And they published my response.<br>Here’s part of what I said:<br>“It has changed my life — I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but it’s allowed me to believe that perhaps America can change for the better. We live in a culture of cars — between parking spots clogging street space to building roads and intersections that are dangerous for pedestrians to the noise pollution (and air pollution!) ... not to mention the isolation and loneliness that comes from car-dependent cultures. The car, in many ways, has become the organizing principle of American life — a logic that has shaped our mental health, our economic structures — the very fabric of our communities.”

I realize I sound like a zealot. Bear with me. Because what I’ve come to understand — after years of living car-free, after becoming an insufferable urbanist who corners people at parties to talk about zoning laws — is that this isn’t just about bikes or bridges or traffic.<br>It’s about money.<br>The before

I grew up in Palisades (in Washington D.C.), a neighborhood that reads suburban despite being well within city limits — single-family homes, tree-lined streets and car-dependent.<br>Getting my license at 16 was a rite of passage. It was freedom — freedom from your parents, freedom to go to the mall, freedom to feel like an adult1. I remember the particular smell of my first car, a used BMW named Pepper with holes in the bumper (caused by me) and weird stains in the trunk (caused by my sister).<br>It represented everything I thought I wanted from life: independence, mobility, the American dream in miniature.<br>When I moved to New York in my early twenties, I had no car. Everyone I knew in the city was car-free — it was just what you did. I figured it would just be an adjustment. Learn the subway. Make do.<br>What I didn’t expect was to fall completely, stupidly in love.<br>Not with a person. With the city itself. With the way a Tuesday night could turn into an adventure just because you walked past a place with good music spilling out. With the friends I made on the train, at the bookstore, on the street. With the feeling of being somewhere instead of always going somewhere.<br>It wasn’t until years later that I understood why I’d fallen so hard. The magic wasn’t exclusively some ineffable New York quality (though, it definitely plays a role). It was infrastructure. It was the fact that I could walk to thirty restaurants, three grocery stores, and my best friend’s apartment. It was proximity. It was design.<br>And it was financial.<br>Because my money wasn’t going to things like car payments or insurance premiums or gas, I was able to spend more on things that mattered. More dinners out with friends. $6.50 to bike over the Williamsburg Bridge with LCD Soundsystem in my ears. Concerts. Broadway shows. Magazine launch parties that turned into natural wine pop-ups that turned into dinners with people I’d met that month.<br>I was spending money on things that brought me joy. And I had never been happier.<br>Research backs this up. A 2024 study published in Communications Psychology found that across seven countries, people who spent money on experiences derived significantly more happiness than those who spent on material goods. A massive 25-year review of happiness research found that spending aligned with intrinsic values and social connection creates more enduring well-being than spending on stuff.<br>My “stuff” budget wasn’t being dominated by a depreciating asset that spent most of its time parked. And it was awesome.<br>@zohran_k_mamdaniIt’s pronounced cyclist.

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What your car actually costs

The most obvious benefit of not owning a car is not paying for one.<br>According to AAA’s 2025 report, the average cost of owning and operating a car in America is $11,577 per year — or $965 a month. That includes depreciation (your car loses about $4,334 in value annually), finance charges, insurance, gas, maintenance, registration, and repairs. It doesn’t include parking tickets, the occasional fender bender, or the soul-crushing hours spent in traffic.<br>Most American households have two cars. So we’re talking about $20,000+ per year just to get around.<br>And the situation is arguably getting worse, not better. One in five Americans now pays more than $1,000 a month for their car — the highest share ever recorded.<br>For probably 80%+ of Americans, car ownership isn’t really a choice — the built environment makes it mandatory...