Driving or taking the subway to and from work have costs associated with them, like gas, subway fare, and parking, but most of us write those costs off as necessary evils of just getting around town. Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent does the math that many of us don't like to do: Add up the real costs of your commute, from travel costs to time lost in traffic. Then subtract that from your take-home pay to see how much you're really making.
The bottom line is that sometimes the best financial move you can make is to live closer to where you work. It's not always an option of course, but if you find yourself spending hours commuting, you should take the time to see exactly how your commute impacts your bottom line. Don't just think about how much it costs to fill up the tank, figure out how much you spend every day in gas, how much your insurance costs you per day, and even how much your time is worth in terms of your hourly rate at work. When you do the math, you may find your hourly rate?or even your actual paycheck?is much trimmer than you might expect. He uses a friend who works at Hone Depot, a 20 mile commute round trip, for $8/hr as an example:
So, if we ignore her commute entirely, a given day sees her working a seven hour shift and bringing home $8 per hour for that work, totaling $56.
What happens when we include her commute? Out of that $56, she loses $2.80 to fuel, $0.20 to her tires, $0.10 to her oil, and $2.00 to her insurance. Her total goes down to $50.90. She also adds an hour of commute time, bumping her up to eight hours of work.
The commute alone drops her hourly take-home pay for her time away from home from $8 per hour to $6.30 per hour. That's the reality of a commute.
Trent gets into the specifics of how he got to those numbers in the post, but the message is clear: your commute costs you a lot, and while it can be scary if you itemize the costs, it's math that's worth doing. Granted, some of the costs will happen anyway (insurance, maintenance, etc), but they won't have the same impact on your bottom line. Since most of you said you commute up to an hour every day, it might be time to look for something closer to the office, find a job closer to home, or show the numbers to your boss the next time you talk about a raise.
How Your Commute Affects Your Bottom Line | The Simple Dollar
Photo by Cory M. Grenier.
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