Pay for travel all the way from BC to Halifax and it's still cheaper to buy a used car there

This is farcical.

But, it's true.

It's cheaper for someone from British Columbia to drive 10 days with a friend to Halifax and back, staying in hotels all along the way in order to buy a used car in Nova Scotia.

It's not only cheaper, but you'd still come out of the deal $4,000 ahead.

You could also just fly from Kelowna to Halifax, buy that discounted car and drive it back.

But, the 10-day driving example is so much more dramatic.

This dichotomy of driving was brought to our attention by Wealthsimple, the digital platform for banking and managing your own money and investments.

The feature was in Wealthsimple's newsletter, cheekily called TLDR -- for 'too long, didn't read' -- a dig at how lengthy and complicated articles about finance and money can be.

As sources, Wealthsimple used the Clutch Used Car Pricing Report and its own distance and hotel and gas cost calculations.

Let's break down the math.

Prices for comparable used cars vary wildly across Canada.

BC's infamous crushing cost of living in all realms and high taxes are certainly factors.

In BC in July, the average selling price of a used car, year 2015 or newer with under 200,000 kilometres on the odometer, was $37,275.

A comparable vehicle in Nova Scotia was $29,128.

That's a difference of $8,147 -- a hefty 22% discount in Nova Scotia.

To cash in on this deal requires a road trip.

And, you have to bring a friend because it's a two-person job to get the car you drove out in and the used car you buy back home to BC.

You'll need to stay in cheap motels, say $150 a night, for five nights on the way out five nights on the way back.

Ten night total: $1,500.

The distance from Kelowna to Halifax is 5,449 kilometres and will take about 56 hours of driving.

Same on the way back, but with two cars this time.

With gas at around $1.50 a litre the two cars are going to gobble up about $2,500 on gas.

And when you get back to Kelowna, there's going to be an out-of-province inspection required, cost about $157, in order to register the car in BC.

So, add up $1,500 for hotels, $2,500 for gas and $157 for the inspection and your costs for fetching the used car in Halifax and getting it back here racks up to $4,157.

Put that $4,157 against the $8,157 savings on the used car and you'll still come out $4,000 ahead.

Of course, to save that $4,000 you and a friend each had to give up 10 days of your lives, endure the monotony of over 100 hours of driving and stay at cheap hotels.

But, hey, you could look at it another way and revel in the road trip, the buddy bonding and the majesty of seeing Canada coast to coast.

The Wealthsimple calculations didn't allow anything for food.

So that's either going to eat into (pun intended) your savings or you'll have to find hotels for even less than $150 a night and split the difference on meals.

As the disclaimer says on the Wealthsimple report: For illustrative purposes only and not advice or recommendation to (activate).

Which means, a lot of people will see this report, tsk-tsk at the blatant price difference between BC and Nova Scotia, but not actually embark on a 10-day road trip to realize the savings.

But, simply illustrating it once again shows how expensive everything is in BC and how prices differ in this big, beautiful and wide-open country of ours.

_{Thumbnail photos from Car Gurus}