I have a long drive to work. Actually, I have a very long drive.
- My drive is so long, that I am the only person in my town who is awake when I leave.
- My drive is so long, that I am able to listen to 3 podcasts and an entire book during it.
- My drive is so long, that I learned how to fluently speak Japanese during one snowy day last winter.
Okay … perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but I feel like I am driving forever!
So I suppose that I am writing this blog post to figure out how much MY drive is costing ME. Or like I think about when I am driving to work sometimes …
How much of my life does this drive take away from me?
Since I approach a lot of things in life analytically, I have tried to quantify my commute. It takes me about 1 hour and 10 minutes to drive 45 miles to work and about 50 minutes to drive home. If I do that 5 days a week, I am spending about 10 hours during the week driving 450 miles.
In other words, I am spending about 9% of my waking hours driving to and from work!
My time – my life – is so valuable, yet I waste it driving in a car. I could be spending this time playing with my kids, hanging out with my wife, or even working on a side-business, yet I spend it in a car!
Besides just time, this also costs me a lot of money. I’ve calculated that it costs me around 25 cents per mile. The IRS, who probably thinks they are smarter than me, thinks that the average drive costs 54.5 cents per mile. No matter whose numbers I use, my drive costs me somewhere between $112 and $245 per week, just in car expenses.
Another factor to consider is opportunity cost. Opportunity cost makes me realize that by choosing to do option A, I am missing out on option B. If I choose to go to a high school football game, then I am missing out on going to dinner with my wife. If I am choosing to make the drive to work every day, then I am missing out on money that I could have made during this time. Could I make $20 per hour working a side business during this time? Well … yeah, I probably could. If I could make $20 per hour during each of those 10 hours of drive time, then I am losing out on $200 per week.
Therefore, when I include car expenses and opportunity costs, it looks like my commute costs me between $312 and $445 per week!
Even putting money and time aside, there are also a lot of environmental costs from using 17 gallons of gas per week getting to work. I try to recycle, pick up trash, and buy less throwaway containers, but I am undoing a lot of this good just by heading to work every day.
But what can I do about it? Since I realize that almost everything in my life is a choice, how can I solve the problem of a long commute? Should I:
- Buy an electric car to help with the environmental costs?
- Work from home for two days during the week?
- Try to work 4 longer days, so that I can take one day off?
- Move a bit closer to my job?
- Bike to work?
- Use public transportation?
- Get another job?
- Call in sick a lot more???
Biking to work sounds like a lot of fun, but I don’t know if I can do this on most days. As a matter of fact, many of these options probably won’t work for me today. Even if I don’t know the solution to my long drive today, the important thing for me is to make sure I realize how much my commute costs (in time, money, and life energy) and to make sure that I am okay with the costs. We can always make more intelligent decisions just by being aware that that there is a decision to be made.
Although I have a long drive to work today, I don’t have to make this drive for the rest of my life.
So what could you do if you have a long drive like I do? Maybe, you want to calculate your costs of commuting to help you determine if you should take another job. Perhaps, you want to convince your boss that you should work from home 2 or 3 days out of the week. Or maybe, you just want to see how much money you will save if you call in sick next Monday!
Tell us about your commute in the comments below. Why are you okay with it, or what can you change to make it better?
And thanks for reading!
~Nathan
Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?
- You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
- You can get motivated and get out of debt.
- You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.
But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!
