Modern Vespa

My used, dented Vespa makes me all my money. Tax free too !!!!

You're half right. Until you sell your bike, the money comes out of your pocket. Bikes get stolen, totalled, dented and devalued, etc.

If and when you recoup some of the cost of a bike, your cost per mile goes down, but not until then. If and when you get your $3000, then cost comes down to 32 cents a mile--still more than 4X what OP stated.

P.

I initially bought a 50cc to save money (no insurance, no tags, no license). It really was to save money, as we gave our 15 year old car to our 16 year old son to drive to school, etc. My husband and I share the second car now. I've since upgraded to a GT200 for the fun factor, but it's still way cheaper than buying another car.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

My story is somewhat similar to Stanny, in that we needed to get a car for my elder son to commute to high school with his younger brother. Instead of spending $5K on a used car, with its associated maintenace headaches, we gave him our oldest car, my wife took my Prius, and I got a new S150.

It has been the best $5K I've spent! I look forward to commuting to/from work, as it is a blast. I've averaged 66mpg, so I'm ahead of the Prius (~42mpg).

When I've added the cost of operation (ie tags, insurance, maintenance, gas, etc), it comes down to about $0.17/mile.

Now that he's gone to college and my younger son can't yet drive, instead of getting back to the car, I've upgraded to a GTS250ie and the joy of riding continues!

Yeah, I'm in a one-car family, my wife has a 30-mile (each way) daily commute up to philly. I've been riding a bus for the last two years (yay public transit!), and I just got sick of it. We decided to get a scooter over another car mainly because the overall TCO was going to be a bit lower. Of course, I could have bought a cheaper scooter, but I'm still saving money over a second car, if for no other reason than the 12K or more dollars I'm not spending on a new car. Maintenance is higher on the vespa, but being able to pay cash up front for the scooter is nice.

EDIT: I also need to agree with Ked, above. I get to work smiling, no matter what the traffic and weather situation are. That almost never happened when I drove or rode the bus. That alone is worth the price of admission.