Commuting - What commuting is saving me

I knew commuting was saving me from paying gas in my parents car, but yesterday I was talking to some friends of mine at school and I realized just how much I am saving. We were talking about jobs, and about my riding, and the guys realised I ride alot, so they asked how many hours I work a week..Well, I only work 15 hours a week. They both started laughing like I was joking. They work approx. 15 hours just on Saturday, not counting hours during the week. Well, I asked why in the world they would do that....They said to pay insurance,gas, and monthly payments on their cars. One of them said insurance is 180 a month!! And the car payment is higher, plus gas!!!

I'd much rather mosey along with 15 hours a week, be able to ride as much as I do, and have to get up semi early rather than have those kinda bills stacking up on me every month. To me "renew your subscription" bills every year are annoying. I gues I better get used to it eh??:crash:

some day i should sum up all the costs and see exactly how much i save... but i'll estimate here...

without the car in Munich i pay for:
1) the train to the mountains on average about 2 times a month for an average of about $13 each, sometimes as low as $6
2) about $8/week for public transit in the city to suplement my bike commuting
3) about $8/month for my carsharing membership (car rental cooperative where i can rent a car any time 24hours/day by dialing the phone)
4) an average of $5 gas donation on average once a month when i ride with someone by private car
5) about $60 (varies by distance, but roughly 3 times the cost of gas) all inclusive (gas/insuarcne/rental) when i rent a car about 4 times a year

== so that's about (13x2+8x4+8+5+60/3) = $91/month!

i guess i also have to include bike maintenance, but that is minimal as i buy tires for the commuter less than once a year... and i use my old mountain bike and stuff that i would own even if i owned a car and didn't bike commute - probably the only special stuff is lights and studded tires for winter... but averaged out over a year the additonal cost is less than a few bucks/month.

my total basic transportation budget is less than $100/month... try getting insurance, car payment, car maintenance and gas and parking for that!!!

ok, i also fly and take the trian long distance (like this weekend i'm going to France to go skiing, but the train costs $160 and the gas alone for a car would be over $200... and i went to Paris on the night train in December) but the car wouldn't really save me anything here.

of course in Europe it is way easy b/c
1) gas costs more (about $4/gal)
2) public transit in the city is GREAT
3) trains are cheap and plentiful for medium and long distance - often cheaper than driving even IF you already own a car and just compare gas (unles you get 3 or more people in the car, then it's usually cheaper IF you already paid the fixed costs of insurance and all)

"They said to pay insurance,gas, and monthly payments on their cars. One of them said insurance is 180 a month!! And the car payment is higher, plus gas!!!"

The cost of owning a new car each year according to AAA is about $6,000.00. This means 9K of your gross salary every year will pay for transportation costs so you can understand why your friends are scrambling to make these payments. These costs are not fixed and they tend to go up each year as auto repairs tend to rise as the car gets older. With gas and insurance rising each year, it wouldn't surprise me if this 6K figure doesn't climb to 8K within the next 4 years.

If your friends are driving new cars, I can assure you the monthly payments are killing them. There's a good posibility that some of them will not graduate and it happens all the time. When I was in college, some of my friends never made to graduation because they had to support a new car. In a way, it was like they just got their girlfriend pregnant and were forced to pay child support. Work at some fast food joint became more important than study and grades. It was quite sad. These were the reasons why they dropped out.

1. Lost Financial Aid -- If your working a ton of hours to support the new car, the school counts all this income in determining your aid. Next thing you know, the school cuts your aid and you have to come up with a lot of cash. I've seen this happen to a lot of students who dropped out.

2. Too tired/Poor grades -- If your working a ton of hours to support a new car, your grades often suffer and you'll hardly learn anything. I know some people can do it but a lot of folks can't. Trust me on this one. The college experience really sucks when you have to work full time while studying at 2 o'clock in the morning with the hopes of keeping a C average.

Yep... vehicles are expensive. I recall my days in NY without a car...and loved it. :) It would be really nice if the communities we live in were able to have the foresight and guts to build out the transportation portion of the infrastructure first, allowing more people to choose L's, trains, bus or our bikes.

My son is going to really struggle when he's a teen, especially if he's expecting to use or own a vehicle for dating. :eek:

Yep... vehicles are expensive. I recall my days in NY without a car...and loved it. It would be really nice if the communities we live in were able to have the foresight and guts to build out the transportation portion of the infrastructure first, allowing more people to choose L's, trains, bus or our bikes.

hey Gar i'm really impressed and it's encouraging to hear such a thing from such a rampant conservative like yourself! anyway, i completely agree --- the US should stop subsidizing the car and suburban sprawl and the market would start creating some real options for people... some communities like Portland, some in CA or Boulder CO are trying... but the auto forces of cheap gas are againt them...

my parents (gee they're so smart) forbid me from having a car my freshman year of college and guess what i started cycling... but like almost every Texan i still thought i needed a motor vehicle to be a real person, so my sophomore year also i bought a motorcycle ($900, insurance $100/yr and i did all my own maintenance) and then had acces to my sister car (she convinced my parents b/c of safety that she NEEDED a car) and then i finally bought an old car ('71 GMV pickup) my senior year (i had a job where i drove a kid around after school so some of my costs were reimbursed)... anyway, unless mommy and daddy are footing the bill for everything (certainly not in my case -they paid my health insurance and holidays and were back-up if i got in $$$ trouble) i don't see why any college student really needs a car - i mean costs are high enough and almost everything is right around campus and there are usually so many options for transit and getting rides with others...

it may be the only time you can easily live without a car in your life (in the USA at least) so ENJOY IT!

Try this calculation.
Total miles / ( time taken to travel + time taken to earn money for car)
THAT is your real speed.

Originally posted by fubar5
I knew commuting was saving me from paying gas

I'd much rather mosey along with 15 hours a week, be able to ride as much as I do
Matt it seems that you ARE learning something at college. :D
Here's to you. :beer:

So, here I am twenty-five years out of college, working 45 hours per week with three cars and three drivers at home. I only have payments on one car, but my total cost of operating 3 cars easily exceeds ten thousand dollars annually.

I wouldn't have it any other way. The use of a car, while expensive, gives me something even more valuable, time. As you progress in your career and family life, the real expensive part of any activity is the time it takes to participate. I look at the cheap airfares that are available to all over the world, and realize that it isn't for lack of money that I don't travel more. It the time it takes away from my responsibilities. If I take time away from the office, my co-workers suffer becuase I am an integral part of making new business come in the front door.

I love to cycle, I just don't have the luxury of building my life around it.

:) I no commuting is saving me from the looks on peoples faces.When I tell them what I spent on gas in the last 6 months $35.00,Then I get a look of amazement on there face.Nice thread Fubar5.

Add parking for those of us in urban centers. Seems ungodly expensive here in downtown Sacto and we're nowhere near the prices in SF.

Fubar, I think you've got it figured out, at least for this time of your life. Good for you. :)

it's encouraging to hear such a thing from such a rampant conservative like yourself!

Gars not the only conservative that feels the same way. When my oldest son started telling me "I NEED a car" my reply was "you need a job". Then I got the spill about how he needed a car to get to work, O please we live within 3 miles of 20 places a teen can get a job! My reply to all this "you have a good bike, find a job" to make a long story short he did ride a bike to work for 2 years before getting a car! I hope he learned a leson from this.
I have 2 autos and am trying to work out a way to use them less and less. I just made a dry run to my work, 13 miles, to see how the trip would go. I think I will be a bike commuter before long, save gas and help myself at the same time.

I grew up riding a bike if I wanted to go places. It didn't kill me! It just twist my shorts to see all these kids out ther driving cars that coust more than a house did 20 years ago!

You go fubar5, I know you will be better off for it! I made a round around the local college yesterday and you see almost no bikes, what gives! Do kids think they are too good to ride them?

...and sooner or later the kids grow up, out, and pursue their own interests. I can decide what is really important in life, which (for me) is continuing to take care of my health. So I sell the big house, move to a place within 10 miles of work where I can actually RIDE to work every day, and happily leave my wonderful little 13 year old truck with 190,000 miles in the garage for a well deserved rest.

I'm sorry that my son has to pay $130 a month for insurance. I'm glad I don't have to. Of course, he never liked riding a bicycle. That's OK. He makes his own decisions and payments now.

And time? I've got plenty of time...to ride my bikes. Everyone has to do what works for them.

By the way Fubar5, do you date much? Seems to me that was the most important reason to have a car at one time. :)

Dating isn't really high on my adgenda right now...Unless you meaning dating my bike....:p

Originally posted by MichaelW
Try this calculation.
Total miles / ( time taken to travel + time taken to earn money for car)
THAT is your real speed.
Dang, I am fast!

:eek:

My calculations...

assumed average car payment/insur. $250+$150 = $400/month
12.5 miles to work in a car takes 30 min. or on a bike takes a max of 1 hour. So a diff of 1hour/day "travel time" or around 20 hours a month difference. And I make $20 an hour, so to pay the $400/month takes 20 hours a month...

so (distance/month) / (difference in hours to travel - time worked to pay for car) should give me my "real speed"

so (500 miles/month)/0 = infinite speed.

I'm almost time traveling by bicycle!

garage parking (not necessarily indoor) in NYC = 150 to 300 a month.
so you drove in to manhattan and couldn't find a parking spot? that's ok, you can stick it in the lot for 8 to 25 bucks an hour.

i've noticed a lot more of those city bike racks bolted in to the sidewalks all over the place. not sure if this is bloomberg's doing or what mighty bicycle lobby is responsible, but i sure am appreciating it.

Commuting is saving me bucketloads of $, but we all knew that (try driving 20,000km/year and see how much that works out to be), but it also saves me time. With my ride to/from work, I get my daily ride in without having to make the extra time for it that I would if I were driving each day. Then there is the sanity saving. I have a bad day at work, I go and work the frustration straight off on the ride home. Commuting also helped me monitor my recovery from a recent illness... but you've all read enough about that now.