Stop Commuting Redux
This image is nothing more than a fond memory right now…
It’s actually the image I used in a May 2007 post entitled, “Stop Commuting…Buy a House Worth $74k More!“. We all know that gas is closing in on the $4 mark one year later, and it makes you wonder what those bright red letters will say in May 2009.
The point of this post isn’t to try to project the future price of gas, or fondly recollect on the good ole’ days of the past. Rather, it’s to revisit the economics of moving closer to work, ditching your car, and living a more compact lifestyle.
Last year, we used a tool available on the St. Louis Metro website to calculate the actual cost of commuting. Luckily, they’ve still got it posted on the site, so it’s as easy as plugging in some new values and converting the cost savings into a mortgage payment. Results below the fold…
The first value I’m updating is obviously the cost of gasoline…we’ll go with $4. Next up is revising the average gas mileage to 23 mpg which comes courtesy of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Next, it turned out that car ownership costs actually decreased last year from $0.561/mile to $0.522/mile, so we made that change too. Finally, I’m bumping up the parking estimate from $50 to $60/month to be a little more realistic. Here’s what the commuting costs look like…
Applying that $477.55/month to a 30 year fixed mortgage at a rate of 6.0% shows that you can now afford to spend $85,000 more on your home!
So for all of you people waiting for that mythical $100,000 2-bedroom condo with a premium High St. address, keep waiting. Everyone else is inherently pricing this philosophy into their offers, and it’s safe to say that they’ll be outbidding you for the foreseeable future.
[...] posted an update on Cap City Savvy that details how much money you can put towards buying a home (or other things) by axing your [...]
What’s the cost of your daily work commute? | The Walker Evans Effect said this on May 21, 2008 at 11:55 am
Wow, that’s pretty crazy. Glad my commute is ZERO.
[...] 21, 2008 at 1:17 pm (Uncategorized) Tags: COTA.Challenge Thanks to Walker and Cap City Savvy for the great information regarding the cost of a commute. According to the calculator, my monthly [...]
COTA Challenge Cost Estimate « Zanne said this on May 21, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Heart Attack Time!
Eighty bucks to fill my tank today. Geesh, maybe the gas stations should offer nitro glicerin pills as a bonus.
Even though I used to drive only a little bit each week, it hurt bad filling up and losing like $40 each time and paying for car insurance, etc. Now that I’ve weened myself off the car, I’ve found just how unnecessary having a car in the urban core is. If only the city recognized that and would promote it, as you have many new residents Downtown from the suburbs who bring their car-dependent lifestyle with them, not to mention that even in our healthy urban neighborhoods residents adhere to a rather suburban lifestyle.
This time last year I thought riding on the road was a death wish, but was glad to see other people were taking up biking on the road. It’s all about getting people on a bike and showing them how to safely ride to overcome their fear, and in the city there’s no shortage of slow, low traffic residential streets. If you live on a grid pattern, you have no excuse and can always bike up to a major street like High or Main and don’t have to bike on it if you don’t want. Or you can ride COTA, but you’ll probably see me whiz by.
Did you see that COTA has a new cost calculator on their site? Warning, it doesn’t work with Firefox.