Sharing is Caring: How to Share Your Car With Friends or Family

Planning ahead can make car sharing low-stress and equitable

If drivers outnumber cars in your household, you’re not alone. The United States Census Bureau estimates that about a third of households have just one car and another 37% have two cars, even though there are on average 2.6 people living under each roof.

Sharing doesn’t have to be stressful. It might even be fun, especially if you split up how you care for your car.

If you and your spouse or a housemate have access to a single car, you might want to set some ground rules early on. Sure, you may have been taught how to share back in grade school, but, let’s be honest here, that was a lot longer ago than you’re probably willing to admit.

Let’s look at some of the best ways to equitably share your car.

Create a Calendar

Google and Apple both offer the option to make a group calendar, which you could use to reserve the car ahead of time. These two calendar providers can also make it easy to split your time since they keep track of the number of hours blocked off during a week or a month.

Setting expectations early on—particularly around car time that might be hard to avoid, such as commuting—can make sharing work smoothly in the long run. The more you can make your sharing into a routine, the happier everyone might be.

Keep Tabs on Younger Drivers

Some newer cars offer configurable keys that can allow drivers to restrict features such as speed and volume limits. And most new vehicles are available with subscription-based telematics systems that include such convenient features as geocaching and a low-fuel alert.

Availability ranges by make and model, but these features can be a handy way to ensure your teen driver doesn’t test too many limits.

A driver’s license can certainly be liberating for a young driver, but it does come with added responsibilities.

Who Fills the Tank and Washes the Car?

A clean car is a happy car, no matter who’s sharing it. And a car with a full gas tank may make its drivers happy, too.

If you plan to share the car somewhat equally, you might apply for a gas station credit card and then split its bill with any co-drivers at the end of the month. You’ll earn valuable fuel points, too, and the card can even be used to pay for car washes if the station offers one.

Budget Accordingly

If you’re splitting the car’s bills, you could keep an old-fashioned fuel ledger in the glove box or create a shared note-taking app on your smartphone to keep tabs on whose turn it is to top off the tank or who drove the most miles.

Between commuting or typical errand-running, drivers often put on about the same number of miles month after month. That makes it relatively easy to estimate what percentage of the car’s miles were added by what driver.

If, for instance, you know that one driver will add about 100 miles per week, while the other may add just 50, then it’s easy to divide the car’s fuel, cleaning, and maintenance expenses accordingly.

With a little planning ahead, sharing a car can be stress-free—especially if you’re keeping its tank full and its interior nice and clean.

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