The goal is to take the car as little as possible. It sounds like visiting the beach and visiting your friend isn't possible without a car, and that's not something that you need to worry about. If there are car sharing services available in your city, like zipcar. You can still do that without committing to the $10k/year cost of owning a private car.

Let's say you use a car 3 times a week, twice to visit friends, and once to go to the beach. Zipcar offers a $11/hour rate, and we'll assume you spend 4 hours on each trip. That comes out to $132/week, or $6870/year, saving you over $3k/year over owning a car. You'd no longer have to worry about maintenance or car insurance. This would also be much better for the environment, since you can use a shared car instead of dedicating a car to yourself. Any week where you don't go to the beach, or your friend visits you, would be pure savings for you, too.

This video is a really good video about why car-sharing is so useful:

https://youtu.be/OObwqreAJ48

Source for $10k/year number:

https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-YDC-Fact-Sheet-FINAL-8-9-21.pdf