Dawn of the Geeks

I’ve heard stories about people selling their house that’s far from their work and purchasing a house closer to work to save money on gas. I know from living in Phoenix that the difference between a 40 mile commute and a 10 mile commute is 100,000 to 150,000 dollars. That’s a lot of gas, not including interest. Basically, you’re spending more money per month in an increased mortgage than you’ll be saving in gas. 100,000 dollars at 24 miles per gallon and $4 per gallon of gas will get you to work for about 6000 days if your commute is 100 miles there and back. Or about 20 years of driving to work. And that’s assuming you drive zero miles at your new “gas friendly” house.

But that 100,000 dollars is an investment you say. Not unless you plan to sell your house rather quickly. The interest on 100,000 dollars over 30 years is about 160,000 additional dollars at a 7.125 interest rate. So in 30 years you spent enough money on the house to drive to work for about 50 years at your old house.

If you owned a large house outside of town and downsized and actually saved money on your new house then it might make sense to move into town.

Because I’m a math major and did the math I bought a house outside of time and deal with the extended commute in order to save money in the long run. Electric cars will be here in a few years which means I’ll not only be saving hundreds of thousands on the house but I’ll also be saving a lot of money on gas because with a cheaper mortgage I have more money for a brand new electric car. In fact, I can spend up to 30K on an electric car simply with the savings in gas by driving all electric.

But also, in the short term, there’s carpooling. I set up this web-site which makes use of Google Maps in order to help you find coworkers who are on the way to work so you can carpool with them. Your company can set up an account and then share the username and public password so you can see your location and all your coworkers locations. You can then click a link to plan your route and it will show you who is best to carpool with. You can then coordinate with your coworkers and refine the plan.

If you share a ride with one person every day who lives close to you, you can easily cut your gas bill in half.

Keep your cheap house and cut your gas bill: carpool. Don’t be silly and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to move in town to “save” money. It’ll end up costing you a lot more.