Does your job provide you the luxury of flexible working hours? Furthermore, are you able to choose to work from home?
I guess I am quite lucky in the sense that I fall into both of these categories. My job enables me to manage my own time and (within reason) work from home. I currently live and work in the London area and a reasonable commute of around 45 minutes / 32 miles. Unfortunately London’s traffic is unpredictable at the best of times and said commute can sometimes take me in the region of 90 minutes one way. Occasionally cars pile up or big festivals make this time even longer! If you read that news article you will find that people got so annoyed with the delay that they cracked out a cricket bat / football and started playing games!
Why I Hate Commuting
Commuting sucks. There is no two ways about it. Firstly, it is expensive. My journey costs around £8 per day in diesel and even more in proportionate car maintenance / servicing costs. If I can work from home 1 day a week, it will leave me with around £35 a month extra in the bank – or £380 a year better of. This is equivalent to almost double that on equivalent pay rise (when you factor in deductions for tax / national insurance. If I can work from home 2 days a week, I can double these savings and will be £70 a month better off after tax! With all of the new cloud based systems that let people more easily work from home these days, you can live in one country and work in another one! For example, you could still maintain a residency in London whilst working for a Canadian finance company simply by using a cloud accounting software package like Provisor.
The car depreciation costs also concern me. I bought my current car with economy in mind, but am well aware that driving 400+ miles every week is a quick way to knock thousands of the value. Unfortunately I am adding in the region of 20K miles a year and by the time I look to get rid of it in a few years time, it will have done about 100K miles. Many of my friends at work have bought themselves fantastic looking new cars, but while I am regularly commuting into work, it is not a good option for me.
Then there are the psychological benefits. Commuting is mind-numbing and seriously boring. The route is tedious and quite frankly a waste of time. It is of course frequently stressful and definitely not a good thing by any means.
WFH: It’s a Win-Win Situation
So you can probably tell by this stage in the article that I am quite a strong advocate of being able to work from home. That said, I do believe that it is important to collaborate in a face-face environment on a regular basis. Instant messaging, email, VOIP from a sip provider, video calls and other virtual sharing is all fine and well, but definitely does not compete with face to face time.
The ability to work from home on a semi-regular basis enables you to be ultra productive (I work the time that I would usually be driving) and give you back some sanity…. and perhaps most importantly for personal finance junkies, this saves us a small fortune!
I plan to take the money saving element of this a step further and start cycling into work a couple of days each week. This would mean that I would potentially only need to drive once a week! In addition to saving me a small fortune (£140 ish per month) this of course has the added health benefits with the exercise that I would get.
It’s a Looooong Way
A few months back I bought myself a road bike for my birthday. With this in mind I have slowly (but surely) started venturing out on longer trips. I have bought myself a new innertube, wheel lever and CO2 pump from eBay and am pretty much good-to-go. All I need now is the motivation (and courage) to go for it!
Perhaps the £8 per trip I will save will be spent on fuel to feed me energy!?
Well, I mostly work from home so I can attest to the benefits and savings. The biggest for me has to be in time. Now I can sleep a bit longer…lol, or fit in some more work. Oh, and I don’t have to deal with public transportation. Always dreaded that part of my mornings!
Nice move with the bike! Just go out there and ride it…with a few rides I think the courage will kick in.
Yeh I am going to go for it I think. Will need to clear my morning of meetings!!
I can’t wait until I can start working from home. I hate the commute. And now that school is back in session there are accidents almost every single day!
Yes when schools go back in London it causes CHAOS. Business commuters and the school run commuters do not get on!
It is a beautiful thing to not have a commute. I was without one for the past 3 years, and it felt amazing (and was very cheap!).
And then things changeD?
I couldn’t work from home (being a dive instructor and all) but I did move to the resort I work at so I took my commute from 40 mins to 2 mins!
AWESOME! Are you going back to the resort when you return from Canada 🙂 – See i always read your blog Rika
Haha I know you read it!! Thanks 😉 And yes, I’m heading back there on Monday!
I work half the week from home and half in an office – it’s great not having a commute for half the days. For me it’s not just about the time/money saved – there are lots of other benefits too. I eat better on the days I work from home and am more productive because of fewer interruptions .
I cycle to work unless it’s really rainy and would recommend it in a shot – though your commute is way longer than mine, Savvy. If you can fit your bike in the car you could do one way by bike each day eg arrive by car, cycle home. Then cycle back to work next morning and drive home from work that night with bike in the boot. I’ve done that before.
The productivity thing is huge… you are right. In the office today I realised that more than ever!!! And good tip on the bike in the car – this is something I thought of, BUT I would end up getting stuck because I was too lazy 😛
I haven’t paid for commuting since 2001. Always cycled or walked to work, or worked from home. It helped that I usually got the job, then found a house nearby.
I had to compromise with a house in the middle of 2 work places 🙂
I’d probably save $5K-$6K a year – it would be awesome if I could work from home! It would also be much safer from a driving standpoint.