THE COST OF CONVENIENCE

My family recently got a second vehicle. We had stayed with one vehicle for both financial and philosophical reasons. Financially, car loan and insurance payments need to find a place in the monthly budget, but more significantly, we realized that for 95% of our life, we can adjust quite well to having just the van (with four kids, we were forced to have a van): walking, bike riding, the occasional rental car all suited us well.

The move to a second vehicle was actually motivated by the fact that the van is already eight years old and has a whack of kilometres behind it. We couldn't imagine having to finance another $30K van in the next couple of years. We need room for six people when the whole family travels together, but the reality is that most of the time, we don't need that many seats. So a small car would be more practical as our main vehicle and we would use the van when we needed the space or if we absolutely had to be in two places at once.

The new car is a bottom of the line 1.6L manual transmission import. No bells or whistles. The van on the other hand has power windows and locks and mirrors, air conditioning and cruise control. In the car, if you want to control your speed, you need to use your foot; it you want the windows or mirrors moved, you turn a crank. It it's too hot, roll down the window and suck on an ice cube.

All the 'extras' that the van has are to make life easier and more convenient. Today, the driver's side window went down but didn't want to go back up. There is no manual override, no 'back up' crank. So, it's off to the mechanic because winter weather also arrived today. The cost of convenience - a few hundred dollars for a new tiny motor to save me the trouble us moving my hand in a circle for 20 seconds.

Bring back the horse and buggy.