Transportation

**// Transportation //**
For this project you must buy a car. Although using public transportation or living close enough to work to walk or bike is a great goal, we are still living in a car culture.

Cars can be expensive to own and operate and we are going to focus on three costs: car payment, maintenance, and gas.

//**Your tasks:**//
 * Find a car. Insert a picture of the car and its cost.
 * Calculate the monthly payment. Insert a picture of that loan calculator.
 * Copy the table at the bottom of the page to your wiki and fill in the payment, maintenance, and gas costs.
 * Enter the total monthly car cost into your Google Doc Budget Spreadsheet.

You must shop for a car from a used car dealer in the area using any of their website resources. Cars.com is one site you may use. If you do use Cars.com, make sure you use the right inputs (new versus used, distance from your ZIP, make and model, and price). Other car websites have similar search features. You must spend at least $2500 on your car.

Document the car of your choice by taking a screen shot showing the car and its price and put that on your wiki.

Next you must calculate the monthly payment using the Auto Loan Calculator. Here are the inputs you will need: You will pay 20% down and finance the rest at a 7% interest rate for 36 months. The sales tax rate is 6%. Take a screen shot of the inputs and monthly cost on the Auto Loan Calculator and insert that below your car.

Here's an example of a Camry I found (on the left). The monthly payment costs are shown on the right.



Calculate the maintenance costs. Older, high-milage cars may be cheaper to buy, but they require more maintenance. So here are the maintenance cost break-downs: If your car cost $2500 to $5000, your monthly maintenance costs will be $175. If your car cost $5000 to $7500, your monthly maintenance costs will be $125. If your car cost over $7500, your monthly maintenance costs will be $75.

Calculate the cost of gas. You will need to estimate the MPG for your car (which can be found on the Cars.com site in the top right corner of the "Specs and Reviews" tab. You will use the average mileage of 1000 miles per month. And you will use the current gas price of $3.00 per gallon. To calculate your monthly cost of gas, divide 1000 by your MPG and multiply by $3.00. For example, the Camry I used in my example gets an average of 28 MPG so my formula would look like this: (1000 / 28) * $3.00 = $107.14.

Enter the total transportation costs on your Google Doc spreadsheet.


 * **Expense** || **Calculation** || **Dollar cost** ||
 * **Payment** || (From the Cars.com online calculator) ||  ||
 * **Maintenance** || (Three levels of monthly maintenance based on car cost. See instructions above.) ||  ||
 * **Gas** ||  ||   ||
 * || ** Monthly total ** ||  ||