Long Commutes Are Sucking the Life Out of You

[orangustang]

Originally Posted by Daox

He does address this and evaluates an inexpensive vehicle and it still comes out to 34 cents per mile. It is with this figure that he calculates the $800/year per mile farther away from work. It would be even more if he used the 51 cent number.

Of course, the whole thing becomes ridiculous when you consider that your time has no intrinsic value. Your time only has monetary value if you could be getting paid to use it otherwise. In many professions, a work week is strictly 40 hours, so for a lot of people, a shorter commute means that fuel and wear on the vehicle are the only monetary costs.

That being said, there is surely some value to free time. Several on this thread have noted that they count their commute as free time because they make it enjoyable. It's a sort of meditative time for some, and a time for entertainment for others. Personally, I rarely get a chance to listen to music outside of the car. I don't know how long I could survive with a stock Metro XFi with no options. I have, on more than one occasion, resorted to listening to music on my phone when driving a car with a broken/no stereo.

Economists will always try to assign a monetary value to time, but the truth is it's not inherently worth anything. It's an easy way to measure and make things predictable in the workplace. In an ideal employment situation, the employer would pay an hourly rate based on how productive you are in an average hour. The net result would be that you get paid more to produce more, in total. Workers are supposed to be paid for work done, not time served. Otherwise, why would you work hard? This is easier to see in all of the jobs where workers earn a commission or tips, though personal experience has taught me that the correlation between income and work in those jobs is far from linear.

Taking all of this into account, I think that it's fair to say there is no cost for your time on a commute as long as you enjoy it. If it were time that you didn't have to be driving, would you still be doing the same thing? For those of us who love driving our cars, the answer is usually yes. Doubly so if you think hypermiling is fun.

With those assumptions in place, the lifehacker estimate for travel cost becomes a whopping $1.10/mi, even if you commute every day.

[Daox]

While I agree time has no intrinsic value, to say time has no monetary value is a bit short sighted. You can do whatever you want with your time, including numerous ways of making money. I do several things outside of my 40 hour work week that provide me with extra spending money. All of these things I would rather be doing than commuting back and forth to that job that still pays the same no matter if I have to commute 1.5 hours a day or .5 hours a day.

I also highly doubt if you ask ecomodders or even just the average joe if they saved 1hr on their commuting time every working day that they would spend that time just driving around for fun.

[gone-ot]

...most people tend to equate the co$t of TIME with their $alary; the more they make, the more expensive TIME is to them.

[meanjoe75fan]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...most people tend to equate the co$t of TIME with their $alary; the more they make, the more expensive TIME is to them.

Which is why you seldom see CEOs bicycling to work: the monetary savings of not driving a car are (roughly) constant, but the extra time involved goes up roughly linearly.

Also why "nice" neighborhoods don't have auto parts stores, etc.

[Fat Charlie]

My job pays me what it pays me for 40 hours, but I have to spend 42.5 hours in the building. If I lived around the corner then that'd be all it took out of me, but I have to spend another 20 hours a week in the car. Not counting getting ready for work, which I'd have to do regardless, I'm spending over 60 hours a week plus the financial costs of my commute just to get that 40 hour paycheck.

So later this year I'm going to set my life up with less of a commute. Something that doesn't cost me much over 40 hours to get paid for 40 and doesn't take as much out of my pocket to get to that paycheck. I don't know what I'll be doing then, but it'll be a lot better.

[slowmover]

Bad enough that we slave away the best hours of the day for others . . to have to work harder and longer just to show up for slave duty is insult on top of it.

My "commute" is now only 5-miles, all but three of that highway. A bit hard on the pickemup (though it does reach op-temp), but I make up for that on days off by my long errand loop (at op-temp long enough that other fluids/greases plus tires come up to par).

.

[Nerys]

My commute is 54 miles one way. roughly 80 minutes at the speed I drive (45-50mph max)

I "use" this time to listen to music, podcasts, audio books. its "me" time to relax.

we own our home. Moving is simply not an option.

even if the move was free the increase in cost of living moving from PA to NJ would quickly skyrocket to way more than I spend in fuel each year even if I moved close enough to WALK to work. Just the increase in property taxes and car insurance alone would be astronomical.

but I can't move for free. it would require selling our home for less than its worth moving and they BUYING a home at an inflated price and then having to pay interest all over again.

I could buy a car that gets 15mpg for my 40,000 miles a year and still spend less money than the "cost" of a move.

it amazes me when I see people say "just move" I simply have to assume they either live with someone else who pays the bills or they rent making moving a lot simpler and cheaper.

for those of us who own our homes moving is almost NEVER a financially viable option no matter how expensive the commute is.

[Nerys]

Time has ZERO monetary value in small doses

this is factually correct no matter which way you spin it for one very simple reason.

Let me explain.

Lets say you commute 60 minutes. it costs you X. you want to save money on fuel but slowing down will add 10 minutes to your commute

and you do some fairy math to equate that 20 minutes per day times 5 times 50 weeks to come up with 83.33 extra hours in the car

lets say slowing down will save you $500 but you say the 83 hours is worth $625 (minimum wage) so its not worth it.

this is poppycock and here is why. its a very confusing but insidiously simply concept once you actually "get it" which is why I call it fairy math.

You can not BANK TIME.

if I save $1 today I can put that $1 in a box and "save" it.

when you save 10 minutes today what are you going to do with it? RIGHT NOW. do something with it. not 30 minutes from now not 3 days from now not 3 months from now.

RIGHT NOW. you see time comes and goes. you can't stop it bank it save it or add it up.

but YOU CAN save DOLLARS. you can add them up.

I look at it this way.

TIME does not equal money but MONEY "CAN" equal time.

I drive slower. this saves me roughly $400 a year. you say I wasted time. I say I just got a week for free.

you see now when I take off a week in august for Naram the week is PAID FOR. its FREE. its like paid vacation because the money I saved is greater than what I would have made had I "worked" that week.

this is because "I CAN" bank money and then use that money later to "BUY" time.

but I can not bank time. I can't trade it save or convert it. once it passes ITS GONE.

now if you can save a SUBSTANTIAL amount of time. (say a job with no commute so now you save 40 minutes each way) OK now you have an actual substantial amount of time you can ACTUALLY USE to do something with on a daily basis (sleep in later and more time with family after work)

but for SMALL bits of time (slow down take 10 minutes longer) YOU CAN NOT USE that 10 minutes to actually "do" anything on a regular basis. SO bank the cash you save and BUY that time back later.

[skylos]

Originally Posted by meanjoe75fan

3. Economists generally value a persons time at 70% of their wage rate. So $25/HR for "lost commute time" implies a near $40/HR hourly rate! What are we, strippers and dealers?

Senior application developer. My 70% rate would be $36.75/hour.

And actually, I do find that the time spent commuting is the absolutely most expensive part of it...

For some reason, my employer decided to locate in the middle of the upper crust shopping mall district instead of the run down old part of town where the 1926 house I'm fixing up is. That puts my commute at about 30 minutes.

I don't really mind an hour on my 2005 Suzuki VStrom motorcycle every day(that isn't icy), but it does annoy me that there's an entire hour every day I have to dedicate to commuting. There aren't enough hours in the day as it is!

$36.75/hour for 250 commutes is only 9,187.50 a year, vs. possibly having a 1/3rd commute of that for $100K more in housing cost. The almighty dollar says... Commute can make sense. Even for highly paid professionals. But the housing cost gradient has to be quite steep.

[skyemoor]

I now ride my recumbent bike to a bus stop, put the bike on the bus, take it off when it reaches the destination closest to my work, and bike the rest of the way in. One way distance from home to work = 44 miles. One way biking miles = 7.5. I use my laptop while on the bus, so am working while commuting (spending less time at the office).

Commuting stress is now a thing of the past.