Originally Posted by
chefisaac
So my wife has a hard time believing that we will be saving money by me commuting. She is an accountant type person... you know the type. Yikes. [/Q
Anyway, I plan to start commuting next Monday and have invested to turn my mtn bike to a commuter. Regardless of what I spent, I want to find out how much I will save by commuting by bike.
So.... I currently drive a toyota tacoma 4 wheel v6 and get about 18 miles to the gallon (avergae between city and highway) and gas is around $3.25 give or take. I drive 22 miles round trip so I know gas will cost me .18 cents a mile which is $3.96 for gas.
Gas is only a small part of the total with the IRS considering 55.5 cents/mile normal.
How close you get to that depends on what your replacement interval (years or miles) is, how new your next car will be, and the maintenance costs that result from it.
If you're leasing a new car every 3 years and commuting won't run you over the mileage allowance you're not going to save any depreciation. You won't see a big difference if you're replacing your car every X years.
If you drive a nice newish car into the ground it's going to save a lot.
If you put the last 100,000 miles on a $2000 Honda/Toyota/Subaru you're looking at $0.02/mile.
When I did the exercise to amuse myself I figured driving cost
$.24 / mile @ 17 MPG (out of a theoretical 20 MPG combined city highway from 18 city and 29 highway - it's pretty easy to divide mileage by how much gas goes in at each fill-up to get personal numbers) the way I drive with $4 California gas.
$.20 / mile if I get 150,000 of my own miles out of the sports sedan I bought when it was 3 years old and get a few thousand out of it for parts.
$.10 / mile for maintenance, scheduled and otherwise
$.02 / mile for $600 tires that last 30,000 miles. Surprisingly this is less expensive than nice bike tires
$.56 total * 24 miles = $13.44/day * 4 days = $54/week, * 48 weeks = $2580/year.
and could add in
$.14 / mile for the beer I drink to relax after driving (cycling 12 miles each way results in relaxation comparable to two micro brews, tax, and deposit on the bottles which you don't get back when you put them in the recycling bin)
$.70 total * 24 miles = $17.00/day, * 4 days = $68/week, * 48 weeks = $3264/year.