The one thing I miss about living is Manhattan is not having a car. But, as we start to plan more summer weekend outings and as Christine gets closer to her due date, having access to a car is becoming inevitable. Unfortunately, we're still figuring out how much we are willing to pay for that privilege and trying to strike the right balance between price and convenience.

We've looked at the following options:

Rental cars - At first, we tried renting cars on the weekends that we needed it. The price was reasonable since the average weekend rental was only $80/day, but it was a struggle to constantly plan our schedule weeks in advance since trying to find rentals at the last minute were always prohibitively expensive.

Zipcar - We signed up to become a member for an annual fee of $75; however, we found that renting by the hour wasn't as useful of a feature as we had thought. Zipcars works well for grocery shopping, but we usually needed a car to travel outside of Manhattan. And, renting a zipcar for 6+ hours at $12/hour started costing the same as renting for the whole day. However unlike rental cars, we enjoyed the 24-hour accessibility and the plethora of available zipcars around our area.

Parking garages - A monthly parking garage spot in our area costs around $400-$450 (or as friends have pointed out to us, what some pay in rent), and they don't take transit checks (pre-tax dollars for commuting). Obviously prices get cheaper for garages closer to the East River or farther downtown, but it just feels wrong to have to take to bus to get your car. We would have probably paid the $400 if not for the fact that daily parking costs at the same garages cost $20/day (if you get in after 7am and leave before 8pm) and they take transit checks. If you do the math and do not mind the added inconvenience of driving the car into the garage every workday, it would be a substantial cost savings.

Parking on the street - The cheapest option, but unfortunately the most inconvenient. You have to spend time moving your car and finding another parking three days a week. While it may seem this option is worthwhile to do, it loses its luster when you start getting parking tickets. Last month, I got two parking tickets and got towed once that ended up costing me $400+ (or the same as the monthly parking garage).