You go to work to get paid, but how much are you paying just to go to work? The average American drives 16 miles each way to work. That comes out to be about an hour in the car per day. And over 3 million people travel at least 50 miles each way to work, for 100 miles a day! 23.4 percent of children under the age of five are in some form of organized childcare. When you start to add up the costs of your commute, childcare, food, and even just wasted time, the cost of working can come as a real shock!
Cost of Commuting
30 minutes is considered a reasonable commute. This flawed thinking about commuting to work might be the biggest thing keeping Americans from retirement. In this article I will be speaking about commutes in the terms of driving yourself, since public transit is virtually non-existent or just plain won’t work for you in the sprawling cities of the Midwest.
In 2019 the IRS estimated the cost of driving at 58 cents per mile (source). This includes gas, depreciation of car, and maintenance. Gas prices were great in 2020 with OPEC flooding supply and the pandemic driving demand to near zero. But recently they have skyrocketed at an increase of almost 100%. This combined with the fact that the average new car now costs over $40,000, and the fact that cars are increasingly difficult to maintain and repair, suggests that this cost of driving will continue to increase.
Let’s look at cost of commuting using this estimate. The average American drives 16 miles each way to work so:
16 miles * 2 * $0.58 = $18.56It costs nearly $20 a day just to drive to work! If you multiply that by 5 days/week and 50 weeks/year (assuming 2 weeks of vacation to make the math easier) that comes out to $4,640/year. Over $4,600 a year just to drive to work! That’s more than the cost of a family of 4 going to Disneyworld!
The 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics found that of married couple families with children 59.8% had both spouses working. Almost 60% of families have two working parents. So multiply $4,640 by 2 for a cost of $9,280.
Cost of Wasted Time
That’s not including the value of the time spent driving to work. One hour/day times 5 days/week times 50 weeks/year equals 250 hours of driving per year. If you make $25/hour that’s the equivalent of $6,250 wasted (if working more hours made you more money). Note: You may not make $25/hour or you may be on salary so more time doesn’t necessarily equal more money so because of that I won’t be figuring this into the total amount. I know that you may not necessarily be able to make money if you had that “wasted” hour back. But still, your time isn’t free and an extra hour of time every day could be used for more productive things than sitting in a car.
Cost of Childcare
Since 60% of families have two working parents, another cost is, of course, childcare. Childcare is stupidly expensive and early child care is even worse. According to the Economic Policy Institute, infant care is more expensive than college.
In Kansas, where I live, The EPI found that on average the cost of infant care in Kansas is $11,201 a year. For a 4-year-old childcare costs $7,951 per year. Compare that to the average cost of in-state public college tuition in Kansas: $7,387 per year. According to ChildCare Aware of America, “The average cost of center-based daycare in the United States is $11,896 per year ($991 a month) for infants and $10,158 per year ($847 a month) for toddlers.”
The average American family has two kids with the Midwest being on the higher end of that average so if we multiply the cost of childcare ($10,158) by 2 we get $20,316. So if we add that together with the driving expense we get $29,596. Almost $30,000/year spent on working. That’s more than the salary of 40% of the country!
Cost of Food
More than half of Americans skip breakfast once a week and nearly ¼ skip breakfast every day because they don’t have enough time before work. This is unhealthy and can lead to health problems down the road. Also after a long day of work and an hour of commuting the last thing you want to do it spend an hour preparing dinner for your family. A good dinner, even one that not a Thanksgiving feast, can take up to two hours to prepare. No one who’s just spent ten hours away from home wants to then spend 1-2 hours slaving over a hot stove.
The solution to that, unfortunately, is that most Americans go out to eat a lot. According to the CDC 36% of Adult Americans eat fast food on a given day. Further 56% eat out at least 2 to 3 times per week, 10% said they eat out 4 to 6 times a week, and 6% said they eat out every day. It is not healthy to eat fast food several times a day and if you opt for a healthier option sit-down restaurant it comes with a hefty price tag.
Even a trip to a cheap restaurant like McDonald’s will set a family of 4 back $30. At 3 times per week that’s almost $100 spent on eating out because both parents are working. That’s another $5,000/year.
And that’s only the monetary costs of working
The monetary costs of working are exorbitant, but those aren’t the only costs. Other costs include time, health, freedom, peace of mind etc. Remember we’re not figuring the cost of time into that number. If this couple were paid hourly and working more hours meant more money, they would be missing out on thousands more in lost wages. But that lost time also hurts in other ways.
As we already mentioned, the more than half of Americans eat out 2 to 3 times per week, and skip breakfast at least once a week. Not only can this be costly monetarily, it is costly for your health. Fast food is not good for your body no matter how you slice it. And skipping a meal can really affect how your metabolism works, potentially leading to weight gain, headaches, and lethargy (source).
Our discussion of commutes didn’t even mention the carbon dioxide put out by cars. According to the EPA the average passenger vehicle emits about 411 grams of CO2 per mile. At 32 miles per commute per person, that equates to 6,576 kg of CO2 per year.
Conclusion
Work is necessary for life. You have to make money to clothe, house, and feed yourself and your family. Nobody is arguing that, at least not on this blog. But as always, you need to be making informed decisions. When you think about the job you want to take, whether or not both parents should work, and what kind of car to buy to help with the cost of commute, all of this needs to factor in when determining your cost of working.
What do you think? Did we make you feel like working isn’t worth it and we should all live in a van down by the river? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below.
