I have this argument all the time with my relatives. It seems to be a widespread belief that if you’ve gone to Home Depot once in the past year to buy lumber, you need a pickup truck, and if you go on one vacation a year with your family, you need a van or a big SUV. But a lot of vans burn twice the gas my Honda Civic burns. Some trucks and SUVs burn three times the gas. At $3/gallon, the difference could be $3,000 a year, if you burn a tank of gas a week.

One could rent a pickup truck every single Saturday instead and save a lot of money. But in doing this, one would realize how infrequently one really does haul something substantial. It’s only about once a year that I buy something that I can’t fit into my Honda Civic, though I’ll admit sometimes I have to be a little creative.

Using vacations as an excuse to justify a van or SUV is even weaker. You spend $1,500-$3,000 a year extra on gas just so you won’t have to take an extra vehicle on vacation? Why not drive a fuel-efficient vehicle and rent something bigger to drive on those one or two vacations a year? The $1,500 you save will pay not only for the rental, but it will probably also pay for a nice chunk of your vacation.

So the other households in my extended family are spending $3,000-$4,500 more per year on gasoline than my wife and I spend. (We both drive Honda Civics.) It seems like most people would do almost anything to have an extra three or four grand to spend every year, but I guess giving up big vehicles isn’t among them.