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Could You Commute on $1 A Day? Here’s One Way

Some walk. Others bike. A few of us use public transportation.

The other 92 percent? We end up using a motorized contraption of some sort to get from boring Point A to boring Point B.

Commuting is a brutally pointless endeavor for most of us. We line up in traffic, follow the various cars in front of us, and hope the experience is over sooner rather than later.

And yet we spend so much money and time on it. The average commuter will spend over $50,000 in a decade and 51 minutes every single day just to get from work to home. Put that money into an IRA over the course of 40 years and invest it at 7 percent interest? You would have $1,068,048. A staggering sum that is almost as valuable as spending a year and a half of your life staring through a dirty windshield.

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So how could you possibly kick the high cost of commuting to the curb and get the cost down to say, $1 a day?

You really have three options. The first is having the commute come closer to you, which is unfortunately easier said then done. Then you have scooters and other two-wheel transportation that are based on economy. A few can do this for part of the year. But for most folks, the lack of safety and exposure to the elements make this a non-starter.

It comes down to something too many Americans shun: sharing a ride and dividing the costs.

As a financial exercise, I took my wife’s daily driver, a 2002 Toyota Prius, and figured that a group of four would be the optimal combination since nobody wants to suffer through that nasty hump that is located in the middle of the back seat floor.

I also assumed a commute of ten miles each way and 5,000 miles a year overall. I added all of the usual costs: gas, insurance, maintenance, repair. I even figured out the little stuff such as oil changes (which I can do myself), and brake jobs (disc brakes aren’t hard but drum brakes may be beyond my pay grade).

2002 Toyota Prius – 20 miles roundtrip

 

 

 

Group Of

Daily Round Trip

Total Cost Over

 

Cost Per Person

Five Years

 

 

 

4

$0.97

$1,209.70

3

1.29

$1,612.94

2

1.94

$2,419.41

1

3.87

$4,838.81

The results? Barely less than $1 a day round-trip for 4 people, or just shy of $250 a year. I was shocked.

There were a lot of unique inputs to the equation that were important for my admittedly extreme example. My wife’s older Prius is a compact hybrid car with a mid-size level of room. That’s pretty much the optimal combination for cheap comfortable commuting. We also factored in a discount in our car-insurance coverage for keeping the odometer at 5,000 miles a year and under, along with clean driving records.

And there is one other hidden critical ingredient: the willingness to do it. A lot of folks hem and haw about not having the right resources immediately. Yes, it does take time to find the right group. But even my father, who ran a successful food import business, would carpool from New Jersey to New York City because it saved a ton of money. His fellow commuters also crowned their vehicle “the freedom train” since it granted them temporary relief from spouses and kids. It took patience for him to find the right commuters, and people did come and go. But his long-term savings made it more than worthwhile.

There are a lot of tools out there to effectively lower your commuting costs by nearly 80 percent. Could you really get it down to $1 a day? It obviously depends on the length of commute along with gas prices, insurance costs (which killed my father in New Jersey), and your ability to horse trade whatever vehicle you buy and sell for that commute. Keep in mind that the costs do vary a great deal (i.e. auto insurance for our 2002 Prius was only $270 a year in Georgia), but with that, so are the savings for folks who live in a state with a high cost of car ownership.

So use the tools that are out there. From co-workers and neighbors, to rideshare listings and community bulletin boards. If you can share the costs of a commute and get your commuting costs down to a fraction of a car, you can invest your money and time into something that can truly make you happy.

Like a nice conversation!  Or in my unique case, a fun weekend car that is designed for enjoyment. Who said driving always has to be boring?