Three Money Saving Tips with Modo

All buckled in & ready to go

Last weekend we got invited to a special event at a movie theatre in Surrey. It was almost 40km from home & nowhere near the Skytrain. I checked out how long it would take to get there by transit or cycling & neither of those options sounded that great, so I decided to book a Modo car. Here are three tips I use to save a little money when driving with Modo:

Photo Credit: wuestenigel Flickr via Compfight cc

Trip Stacking

Rather than doing just one thing with our Modo, I always try to see if there's an errand we can add in along the way to make our trip a little more efficient. This time, we hit up Ikea on our way home, since we needed to pick up something for our kitchen. The detour to Ikea added less than a kilometre to the trip, & only a couple extra hours of booking time, so it cost quite a bit less than booking another separate trip to just go to Ikea.

Photo Credit: Phillip Pessar Flickr via Compfight cc

Think Short, Not Fast

Another trick I use to save money with Modo is taking the most efficient route in terms of distance. I 

Google Mapped the route & looked at each of the three suggested routes, picking the one that is the fewest kilometres. For some of our regular trips, to see family in Coquitlam, for example, taking the highway might be two or three minutes faster, but it costs $3-4 more in kilometre charges for the round trip. So we pick the shorter route, not the faster one. Over a year, those little savings add up.

A Kia Rondo can carry the four of us plus a small Ikea haul

Small is Beautiful

The other thing we do to save a few dollars here & there is to pick the smallest, most efficient vehicle size for trip. The vast majority of the time, all we need is something that will seat the four of us--we don't need much cargo capacity to carry, say a couple of birthday presents to a family party in the suburbs. Even Ikea trips are very doable with the Daily Drives category of cars--we drove a Kia Rondo & bought a kitchen cabinet, as well as a handful of other things at Ikea & there was more than enough cargo space in the back hatch for our flat packs.



The other great thing about these three habits is they are more environmentally friendly too--driving fewer kilometres, making fewer trips, in smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles minimizes your carbon emissions.

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