Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3 hours each time) is $90-100/month.
So a single car not very expensive car costs the same as 5 years of a full-time nanny and part-time maid.
And that's without figuring in all the extra costs of a car, especially parking. There's not really free parking most places here. So you'll be paying for parking literally everywhere you go.
Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage. And the space for a garage isn't cheap either. If you're a middle income family you're probably living in one of the capital cities and most people would probably be shocked at how expensive land is in the capital cities nowadays.
[1]: https://www.honda.com.vn/o-to/san-pham/honda-civic/index.htm...
So a single car not very expensive car costs the same as 5 years of a full-time nanny and part-time maid.
And that's without figuring in all the extra costs of a car, especially parking. There's not really free parking most places here. So you'll be paying for parking literally everywhere you go.
Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage. And the space for a garage isn't cheap either. If you're a middle income family you're probably living in one of the capital cities and most people would probably be shocked at how expensive land is in the capital cities nowadays.
[1]: https://www.honda.com.vn/o-to/san-pham/honda-civic/index.htm...