Excellent point! I believe Mr. Money Mustache addresses objections of exactly this type in this related post: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/07/how-to-tell-if-you...
;-)
;-)
Linking to his blog post in this way is tantamount to implying that the commenters on this thread are "complainypants", which I find quite rude. If that wasn't his intention, then he certainly could have done a much better job communicating it.
(This is my last post on this topic.)
But after about 10 minutes I realized that the author wasn't making a financial argument from the numbers, he was making an emotional argument with hand-waved numbers for garnish. And that, despite my interest in the issue and agreement with his conclusion, it simply wasn't worth that kind of time.
[1] e.g. $200/20,000 miles for car costs beyond oil/gas/tires is laughably low; ignoring parking/toll costs in the no-commute/used-car case; considering lost time in the commuting case but not lost-personal time in the no-commute case; assuming financing in the commuting case and savings for a used car in the no-commute case; ... generally just considering worst-case for the commuting case and best-case for the no-commute case in almost all things