Friday, July 18, 2008

How Much is Your Commute Costing You?

Mine costs me almost $10/day.

If you have a good idea of the mileage your car gets, you can get a good idea of how much your commute is costing you. I like to determine my mileage by tracking my mileage and the number of gallons of gas I get. I keep a little notebook in my car where I record the fill up date, the total number of miles drive, the total number of gallons, the cost per gallon, and the total cost. Then if you divide the total miles by the total gallons, you get the MPG for your last tank of fuel. Of course this only works if you fill up your tank.

Right now I'm on a client that's about 23 miles away from my home. The MPG I've been getting is around 22-24 MPG. That means each drive out there is a gallon of gas. Each day is two gallons of gas. My car is supposed to get midgrade gas, which cost me $4.61/gallon last time I filled up.

Basically my daily commute is $4.61*2 = $9.22. I hate spending money when I feel like I don't have to. I think commuting that far is kind of a waste, but when you're a consultant, you don't always get that much choice on where your client is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I checked and my commute to my old job was about $2.92. That was a lot better than my last job in VA, where my commute was $9.42 each day. In addition, I had to wait in traffic tunnel.

Mrs. Accountability said...

Since we live so far away from the "big city" we really watch our commute costs closely. At $3.99/gallon it is costing me $20.80 round trip to get to my job and get back home. Agh. I use my Gasoline Calculator to calculate exactly how much money I am spending for each trip or for the entire month. It's in MS Excel format and free to download from the blog post I've linked.

calgirlfinance said...

green panda, Hopefully you can find a new job close to home!
mrs. accountability, I can't believe it was costing you $20 a day to get to work!!!