Challenging Myself

I have decided to challenge myself. No, not to work out, climb a mountain, or learn something new.

I am challenging myself to ride the bus to work every day for a week.

This is something that I did for a long time when I first started working downtown. Unfortunately when I got pregnant, the motion and smells did not quite do it for me.

So I started driving to work, and got addicted to it.

Every time I drive to work this is how much it costs me:

Mileage: 50 miles round trip. My car gets about 16.5 miles to the gallon (economical I know). A gallon of gas right now is about $3.70. That comes to a daily expense of about $11.21.

Parking: I usually park underground in the winter and have begun parking in an above the ground structure now that it is warmer. The daily rate for parking is $7.25.

My total daily expense, not including wear and tear on the car, is $18.46. This would bring my weekly expense to $92.30 and my monthly expense to around $369.20.

Scary huh? When I look at it from that angle it makes me very happy that I rode the bus this morning. Just for kicks I will figure out how much the bus costs me to commute each day.

Monthly bus pass: $75.00 pre-tax, which I think makes it about $52.50 post-tax.

Mileage to park and ride: 22 miles round trip. Daily gas expense $4.93.

The total monthly expense for commuting via the bus is $151.11.

Really there is no question which of these I should be doing. So I challenge myself to start riding the bus again like I did before, EVERY DAY.

I will let you know how it goes. Reading while riding it to work today was actually pretty nice!