Every time you go somewhere in your car, it costs something. You may or may not think about it, however, when your gas tank is running low, that’s an inescapable point of epiphany from which no vehicle operator can escape. There are other costs associated with driving though, including wear-and-tear on the car, maintenance of the vehicle, the time you spend on the road, and so on. This is precisely why the federal mileage reimbursement rate is $ 0.55 per mile for 2009.
So that is a very quick and easy way to quantify the real cost of driving. You know how far you went, times 55 cents per mile, and you know how long it took you to make the trip.
Therefore, a quick drive to the grocery store five miles away, round trip, is going to cost a total of $ 5.50 in gas and wear and tear on your vehicle and likely use up fifteen minutes or so of your time which could have spent doing something more productive. If you are in the regular habit of running to the store to pick up food for dinner on a nightly basis, for example, that’s going to cost you about $ 165.00 per month in added driving expenses, in addition to using up 7.5 hours of your time over the entire month. Just think of what you could have done with all that extra time and money if you made just two trips to the store per month instead of daily trips.
I SAVE
$ 100
PER MONTH
Since I have started taking notice of where and when I am driving and eliminating unneccesary trips, or compounding trips out to be more productive, I figure I have saved an average of $ 100 per month, or $ 1200 per year, that was otherwise being spent on unneccessary car trips. In addition, over the year, I’ve gained an estimated extra 10 minutes of time per day, which adds up to 60 hours or so for the year, or 2.5 full days total.
A couple of closing notes:
Insurance is an added vehicle expense but premiums are not typically dependent on how much you drive, so it was purposely left out of this analysis.
You can be more productive while on the road by listening to audio books and such, dictating into a recorder, bringing someone else with you to drive while you work on a laptop, getting to know better the other people in the car with you, and so on. Often while driving in the car is one of the only places my wife and I end up having good conversation.
Be careful if you talk on the phone, however, because the increased productivity may result in much greater costs due to your innattentive driving, and it may even be illegal in some areas.
Finally, consider walking or riding a bike to any nearby places you don’t need to haul a lot of stuff to and from. You get exercise, it’s more environmentally friendly, and you save money all at once, which is absolutely wonderful!
