Could You Commute on $1 A Day? Here’s One Way

Some walk. Others bike. A few of us use public transportation.

The other 92 percent? We end up using a motorized contraption of some sort to get from boring Point A to boring Point B.

Commuting is a brutally pointless endeavor for most of us. We line up in traffic, follow the various cars in front of us, and hope the experience is over sooner rather than later.

And yet we spend so much money and time on it. The average commuter will spend over $50,000 in a decade and 51 minutes every single day just to get from work to home. Put that money into an IRA over the course of 40 years and invest it at 7 percent interest? You would have $1,068,048. A staggering sum that is almost as valuable as spending a year and a half of your life staring through a dirty windshield.

So how could you possibly kick the high cost of commuting to the curb and get the cost down to say, $1 a day?

You really have three options. The first is having the commute come closer to you, which is unfortunately easier said then done. Then you have scooters and other two-wheel transportation that are based on economy. A few can do this for part of the year. But for most folks, the lack of safety and exposure to the elements make this a non-starter.

It comes down to something too many Americans shun: sharing a ride and dividing the costs.