This post is part of my Downsized Budget series. For an introduction and links, go to The Downsized Budget: How and Where to Cut Back.

It was quite a shock when I moved to southeast Michigan and first saw auto dealer ads where the advertised specials were based on “employee pricing.”

That is such a rare situation in other parts of the country that, when my dad qualified under his stepdad’s retiree benefits for an employee discount on a vehicle purchase, the rest of us in the family CONGRATULATED HIM on his good luck – quickly followed up by “Can I get in on that deal?”

The autoworker employee and family discounts have contributed quite a bit to the number of very nice American model vehicles that are seen on the city streets and highways in southeast Michigan.

But if you are living on a downsized budget, you’ve got to rethink your transportation expenses. There’s not just the auto payment to consider, but also repairs and maintenance. And the auto insurance rates in southeast Michigan are very high.

Adjusting down the vehicle expenses can be difficult for local families to arrange when almost 47 percent of Monroe County workers commute to another county for work, and the local high schools are increasingly encouraging their students to take additional courses at the community college or another campus.

On the other hand, if one of the family wage earners has lost his or her job, that does free up one vehicle to be put on standby status, teenage driver status, or sold to clear the loan and / or insurance liability.

Some other vehicle budget tips:

• Learn how to do minor auto repairs. At least one of the community education classes in Monroe County have had auto technology introduction classes in the past. The new schedules will be announced in January.
• Seek out and save auto service coupons. Some of the local oil change and vehicle service places frequently participate in the coupon book programs, give coupons to customers or run specials in the newspaper. Save and clip those offers, use them as needed.
• Encourage the students to use public transit. The students may not like the lack of convenience, but if you live in the Monroe area, Lake Erie Transit is a realistic option. Monroe County Community College students are eligible for the student discount passes for LET. Some of the students who attend university in other cities have access to car sharing programs. And I let my daughter drive my car to Monroe High School on the one day a week she was most likely to have after-school meetings – the rest of the time, she had to ride the school bus or carpool. Junior high and grade school kids can be encouraged to ride bicycles to school rather than having mom and dad drop them off.
• Think about transportation availability and options when you decide where to live. I was adding up drive times to locations we frequently traveled to when I was house-hunting because I wanted as short a commute as possible. These days, gas prices are just as important of a consideration as time wasted in the car.
• Ask about alternative work schedules. Some offices have gone to four-day, 10-hour work weeks to cut down on commuting expenses for their employees. Alternative work schedules also might allow you to more easily line up a carpool with a co-worker.
• Take a serious look at student activities and the impact on your transportation expenses. It’s usually easy to find a school bus, public transit or carpool back and forth to school. The complication is when your child is signed up for dance, sports, scouts, theater, clubs and other activities that require transportation after business hours, on the weekends or out of town. How are you going to arrange for those rides? Are those expenses a realistic option on a downsized budget?
• Ask about insurance discounts. Contact your insurance agent and find out what options you have for keeping the vehicle rates down. If a wage earner is now unemployed or working closer to home than with a previous job, that vehicle won’t be driven as many miles on a daily basis and you might get lower rates (that did happen to us when my husband no longer needed to commute). And several years, ago, I took collision insurance off my car when I realized the trade-in value no longer made sense with what I had to pay for collision. Yes, I did have a minor accident with that car with no collision coverage. The vehicle inspection and emergency repairs ended up below what the deductible would have been anyway. Your student driver might get a discount for good grades. Your senior citizen status might give you a discount if you participate in a driver refresher class.