Downsizing deliberately

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So, my car is currently a leased vehicle, and my lease is up at the beginning of February. We've started to look at what our end of lease options are -- and one of them, of course, is to let the car go back. Currently the buy price on the car is more than it's worth, so we're not keeping it. Matt's car is a CR-V with nearly 300k miles on it, so we'd like to get something newer for him too. We've gone around about this a few times over, and really what it's coming down to is the idea that, as his new job is not terribly far from my work, it might be the right time to consider dropping down to one car, and getting a newer CR-V for the two of us together. Even if we still have a car payment, we'll only have the insurance and gas for one car to consider and I won't be paying for a parking pass at my school, which is a considerable savings. Also, our schedules work for it to be feasible.

This is a big deal for me, as I have only been without a car for more than a week once in my life since I was 15 -- and that was due to an unpleasant car death when I was living with my parents and my marriage was falling apart and I was freelancing in the RPG industry for a living and supporting my husband as he went back to school. It was not terribly fun. This time, I'm the one who brought it up, so no worries there. It would put me on campus more, but I have an office and a library carrell, so I have places to work on my dissertation without dealing with doggies. It would probably be a good thing to get me on campus more for my work, even if it makes me a bit twitchy at not driving as much. Then again... driving isn't a thing that is the end all-be all of existence. And it'd be better for us financially and better for the environment (and easier on our poor old driveway). But I'm struggling with it a little, even though I like a lot of the perks of it.

If you've deliberately downsized your driving options, I'd welcome your input in how it's affected you. More data points are always a good thing.

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