Trim the Fat Tuesday: The Car Taxes

As I mentioned last week, we are in the process of becoming, once again, a one-car family. There are lots of savings to be wrung from this one simple (albeit somewhat demanding) act, including

Cutting out one car's worth of annual taxes and fees.

In Massachusetts, we are charged an excise tax on each car. It's based on the value of the car, and bottoms out a $30 a year once your car is old and not worth much any more (which has been the case with the Focus for as long as I can remember). Get rid of the car, and you don't have to pay the excise tax anymore.


The other fee we incur with each car is the resident parking sticker for the Newburyport lots. It's not much at all — at just $10 every two years, it's a actually a great deal. Still, one less car means one less parking sticker, so there you go.

The annual total of car taxes and fees that we now can skip is $35, which is just under $3 of savings per month. I'm going to round up, as usual. It's not a lot, but, as we've seen, little bits add up to big savings in the long run.

Savings per month: $3

 Total Savings for August: $1,165 (this month's savings plus the savings already in place from previous months!)

 Total Savings in 2014: $4,549

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