a guy that works with a friend.......

[97guns]

so my buddy is telling me about this guy he works with, he makes around $22/hour. he just bought a house 100 miles away from work, the closest and only thing he could afford. not so bad because he works graveyard starting at midnight so he misses traffic both ways but he drives a suburban that he fills up every 2 days, close to $100 each fill.

i did some quick math in my head and the guy is not doing so great. he's making around $800 a week pre tax, clearing $600 of which $300 goes to fuel but he thinks everything is jim dandy because he charges the gas every week. if he was working a strictly cash in, cash out balance sheet he would probably not be eating dinner tonight.

worse yet....he had to go in on the house with his sister just to squeeze the mortgage payments, she drives the same route that he does but she works a 9-5 job, she leaves the house at 6-6:30 and gets home after 8:00

i havn't done any hard calculations but i think they would be better off renting an apartment near work

[disneysteve]

You really have to wonder how folks like this got past grade school with a total inability to do even basic arithmetic.

Certainly, they should be renting closer to work. In addition to the money saved on gas and wear and tear on their vehicles, they would also save 4-6 hours per day. They could use some of that time to get second jobs and boost their income even more.

What they are doing is insane on many levels.

[creditcardfree]

You really have to wonder how folks like this got past grade school with a total inability to do even basic arithmetic.

Certainly, they should be renting closer to work. In addition to the money saved on gas and wear and tear on their vehicles, they would also save 4-6 hours per day. They could use some of that time to get second jobs and boost their income even more.

What they are doing is insane on many levels.

I wonder if people even get that their income and expenses are a math problem!!

[97guns]

I wonder if people even get that their income and expenses are a math problem!!

they do not because everything is charged...

[rennigade]

Sadly I dont think 1.5 hour commutes are that terribly uncommon. I know a few people who live really really far away from their jobs near DC. I couldnt imagine living that way.

We're told over and over that you should own your own house. Its part of the american dream propaganda. People have trouble accepting the fact that when you rent you are getting something. No you dont get to keep it and its not yours...the same can be said for the food I just purchased at Costco. After I eat it its gone...but I do get something out of it in return.

[edg126]

100 miles! that is insane. I used to have a 1 hour 10 minute commute my first job out of college (i was only 23 miles but on a horrifically congested highway. off hours it's a 35 minute drive). As soon as I saved up enough I rented an apartment 15 minutes away. That was something I had to do that was temporarily out of my control, but to willingly do it is stupid. This was also i 2004 where as far as I can remember gas prices weren't terrible to hit the wallet, even though I was filling up twice a week.

Jeez, now I work from home, fill up my tank once every 3 weeks and when I see the 65 - 70 charge on my credit card I cringe. Their future is so predictable from our perspective. massive cc deb, foreclosures, etc.

[Permanent Temp]

I used to commute about an hour and a half to work it was about 65 miles a day. But it paid off in that I get better paying jobs closer to home now.

I am having that math issue at the moment. I'm totally removing credit cards from the equation now that my contract is up. It's a lot harder pill to swallow. Good news is its working and things will be fine because I have an EF. I'm not excited about the situation but it will be good to have some time off.

[grbrown505]

Trade in

There are so many ecanomical vehicles these days that a person could buy a $1500 beater (4 cyl) that he could use for commuting and park the gas hog if he doesn't want to get rid or it.

[grbrown505]

Scooter

Or a scooter in good weather.

[ua_guy]

$22/hr *2080 hours in a full time work year = $45,760 annual income

$3813 montly gross income

Let's assume he takes home 85% of that as net pay. $3241 monthly. $1620/paycheck as a net amount on a bi-weekly pay schedule.

A an older Suburban gets around 16mpg on the highway. 200 miles roundtrip works out to be 12.5 gallons of gas used, per day. I just paid $3.61 for 87 octane, so that's $45 per day in fuel. Let's assume 22 working days in a month, that's almost $1,000 per month in fuel.

Calculating gas as a budget line item at almost 30% of one's montly net pay seems slightly insane.

This is all quick napkin math, so please feel free to point out if I've blundered a number.

It seems like the guy should find cheaper transportation, or find a job closer to where he lives, if that's possible...

[97guns]

he doesn't do the math because no matter what numbers he runs everything = credit

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

so my buddy is telling me about this guy he works with, he makes around $22/hour. he just bought a house 100 miles away from work, the closest and only thing he could afford. not so bad because he works graveyard starting at midnight so he misses traffic both ways but he drives a suburban that he fills up every 2 days, close to $100 each fill.

i did some quick math in my head and the guy is not doing so great. he's making around $800 a week pre tax, clearing $600 of which $300 goes to fuel but he thinks everything is jim dandy because he charges the gas every week. if he was working a strictly cash in, cash out balance sheet he would probably not be eating dinner tonight.

worse yet....he had to go in on the house with his sister just to squeeze the mortgage payments, she drives the same route that he does but she works a 9-5 job, she leaves the house at 6-6:30 and gets home after 8:00

i havn't done any hard calculations but i think they would be better off renting an apartment near work

I live rather far from where I work, but I work in a major city. I don't want to live in the city and I enjoy my driving time as time to think. Where I live I could take mass transit into the city but it really doesn't work out to much cheaper at all.

[ua_guy]

I live rather far from where I work, but I work in a major city. I don't want to live in the city and I enjoy my driving time as time to think. Where I live I could take mass transit into the city but it really doesn't work out to much cheaper at all.

I was thinking about this too. I also live far outside the city (40 miles?) because I absolutely cannot/will not live in dense urban areas. I thought my commute was expensive (80 miles/day at 29mpg) but comparable to this guy's situation, it's super cheap.

I think the commute for this guy is do-able, but it just needs to be done on a cheaper scale if he's ever going to survive. An inexpensive car, even if it got twice the fuel mileage at 28mpg would pay for itself pretty quickly and then start saving money.

[TBH]

I once knew someone who lived in New Jersey and worked in Manhattan earning about $13 an hour. She had medical issues that prevented her from taking the subway, and rarely had enough time to walk or take the bus. She took a cab from home to the train station each day ($10 each way) plus a cab from the train station to work at the other end (don't know but at LEAST $10 each way.) So that adds up to $40 a day just for transportation, not including train fare to and from the city and lunch in a restaurant.

At a certain point, you have to figure out whether your job is even covering your commute.

[97guns]

***UPDATE***


THE GUY STILL DRIVES THE SUBURBAN and had intended to buy a cheap commuter but instead is planning a
vacation to paris, going in january 2015. round trip airfare is booked and $4K for 2 people, his own words were "the commuter will have to wait"

i expect him to drop 10K on this trip, his other co worker tried scaring him by telling him of his vacation there last year when pizza was $15-20 US for a slice, didn't work.

the good news is the sister no longer has to commute because she got laid off and now collecting unemployment