American Dream Ledger: Lifetime Cost of Cars

## What this measures

Average annual household spending on private vehicles (purchases net of trade-ins, fuel, insurance, maintenance and repairs, finance charges, leases and licences) from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, × a 60-year adult lifetime. Dollars, monthly.

## Why it matters

Cars are the second-largest lifetime cost for most households and the one most exposed to fuel and vehicle prices.

## How to read it

Higher means owning and running cars costs more. It moves with the CPI private-transportation index between survey years and resets each September when BLS publishes a new year.

## What it does not say

It is the average across all households, including those with no car, so a car-owning household spends more. It is spending, not the full economic cost of a car (depreciation is counted only as purchases).

## How it is priced

Each month is priced in that month's dollars. Annual public figures (a BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey year, an NCES academic year, a CMS health-spending year) are the average for their own period: a month inside the period is the figure × the matching CPI-U index for the month ÷ its average over the period, and months after the newest published period carry that figure forward by the same index until the next edition replaces it. Nothing is projected forward and nothing is discounted: it is the price tag at today's prices. A month is written once its CPI and a full month of mortgage rates exist. October 2025 has no reading because BLS published no CPI for it.

## Assumptions

Assumptions used across the American Dream Ledger: an adult lifetime of 60 years (18 to 78, about the remaining period life expectancy at 18 in SSA's life tables); a working lifetime of 40 years (25 to 64); two adults and two children; a 30-year fixed mortgage with 20% down; four years of public in-state college per child; retirement of 20 years from 65 (about SSA's period life expectancy at 65, men and women averaged) at 70% of median household income. Weddings are left out: no public-domain source measures what a wedding costs.

## Source

Palanor calculation (src/lib/standards/american-dream.ts), recomputed daily by /api/cron/american-dream. Inputs: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, Transportation minus Public and other transportation, all consumer units (series CXUTRANSLB0101M − CXUPUBTRANSLB0101M, public domain); carried by CPI-U private transportation (CUSR0000SAT1, BLS via FRED).