I never really thought about how much money/time I put into commuting. After all, its just one of life's little things that you let inertia just carry you and not give any thought to how much its costing. In the past month, I started a new job that requires me to metro now instead of driving. This was a personal choice since we only have one car, and I've been dominating its use for most of its life while my wife had to deal with the metro, and then eventually me just giving her rides.

My commutes though, are a little atypical to the DC area. After all, with my old and new job, I commute OUT of the city into northern Virginia, while everyone else is coming in during the morning rush. If I took the car, it would take me 20 minutes tops to get to work. However, I take the metro, and on average, the commute to work averages anywhere between 40 to 60 minutes. Doubling, sometimes tripling the time to get from the house to my work area.

So I decided to break it down, if I could commute with a car or metroing, what would each way cost me?

With the car, there are a lot of visible costs. There's the car payment, insurance, parking fees, and gas of course. Then there's the slightly less visable costs, since I don't have to pay these things except occasionally. Maintanence is one. Which on average will break down to oil changes and 15k/30k type of services, which for an average car usually breaks down to about 1200 bucks a year. Then there's the environmental cost, although seeing how we own a hybrid, its a bit less of an impact. I worked it out to be about 600 dollars a month on average. This is with no money down on a car for around 20k (nothing fancy, regular small to midsize sedan) That breaks down to about 20 bucks a day. This also takes into account that my company is generous enough to pay for our garage parking in Rosslyn.

Meanwhile, with Metro, the only cost is the metro pass. And again, my company is generous to provide me enough Metrochecks to cover my commute 100%. But...the trade-off is time. Lots of it. Seeing how I spend on average an extra hour everyday on the metro, all that time can add up. There's also the inconvenience of freezing my ass off recently with the arctic blast that we've been dealing with. Also is the loss of mobility. Before, if I needed to run an errand, pick up dinner, or whatever, I could do it. Now? Not so much.

So while I might be saving 600 bucks a month not owning an extra car, I am having to pay with it in other ways. Time IS money. It never made sense when I was a kid. Time was abundant then! How did it become so scarce?