I’m three weeks into my new job, and I don’t want to jinx things, but so far it’s going really well. All in all, this position is a much better fit. And that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. :)
One thing about the new job I don’t love is the commute. Mine is not bad by NoVA standards, about 30 minutes to travel 7 miles.
A lot of the commute is stop and go, which drives me crazy in my stick-shift Jetta. (I think Jetta might be German for either “twink” or “sorority girl”… but I digress.)
The other option is to take a toll road that more or less parallels the stop-and-go route. But from day one, I decided I wouldn’t take the toll road. After all, it’s 50 cents per use, or a dollar a day. Five dollars per week. Approximately two-hundred fifty dollars per year!
Being the oh-so-modest frugal mastermind that I am, I bragged to a coworker how I was saving so much money on a yearly basis by avoiding the toll road.
“Are you crazy?” she asked. “I take the toll road every day. It saves me 15 minutes at least.”
Hmm… Fifty cents to save fifteen minutes?
I couldn’t tell if that was a fair trade, so converted that $2 per hour. TWO DOLLARS PER HOUR?!
I realized that one would have to be batshit crazy to value one’s time at less than $2/hour. Essentially, by not taking the toll road I was saying, “I’d rather sit in traffic than spend $2 for an extra hour of free time. My free time is not worth $2 per hour.”
But of course, I do value my after-work time much more than that. From here on out, it looks like it’s the toll road for me.
Thank god for my E-ZPass.
And look at it like this - you’re probably saving mooney on gas because stop and go is a gas-burner.