as i flashed my bus pass to the driver today i started thinking about how much less we were spending on just getting back and forth to work. i understand that the comparison is a bit flawed since the jboss is no longer working for the man – but the savings are real.
if you add up how much we were spending for insurance, maintenance, gas, tolls, taxes and depreciation just to drive back and forth to work it tallies up to a bit shy of $20,000 per year.
just to get to work and back.
here in nz we have just our used corolla and use the bus for almost all of our traveling. that plus the ability to walk to most everything (grocery, coffee, movie, paper, post, meals, pharmacy & beach) means the car mainly just sits unused out front. i haven’t been in it for a couple of weeks now.
gas prices here are crazy (NZ$1.78 / litre – or about US$5.50 / gallon) but we drive so little that it doesn’t really matter much.
adding up our nz costs the total was NZ$5,900 or about US$4,425 per year.
net savings: over US$ 15,000 per year.
that’s a lot of green. and red and purple. (nz currency has different colours for each denomination)
