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Me_irl
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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me_irl
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I actually factor commute time and gas against my paycheck when job hunting to get a more realistic image of my take home.
Say I'm getting paid 10/hr for full time, 5 days a week at a job that's 10 miles from home, and my car gets 20mpg in city.
40hrs*$10=400
(20mpg/10miles2way trip) 5days = 5 gallons of gas a week.
Gas here is is about $3.80*5days= is $19 that comes out of the 400 we make each week so we actually get $381
But factoring commute, that's 40hrs + 10min a day travel time = 41hrs, 40min.
381/41.667=$9.14/hr
That's not even considering commute traffic, vehicle maintenance, fluctuating gas prices, out just basic ass income tax. At the end of the day, this job is only paying about $7.15/hr which is less than I'd make walking to a minimum wage job within 5min.
Coincidentally, this is why it's so hard for rural communities to get out of poverty, at point I was doing 1hr, 43min in commute to a job that paid 10.30/hr 5 days a week. I was barely scraping by and to take any other job was going to net me negative money.
I do it easier:
Add a shitload more if America because #mercenaryHealthcare
Correct, but it's also the time you lose when commuting, which also forces you to sit still. If you work 8 hours/day and have a 1 hour commute, then you're effectively locked up for 10 hours per day.
So currently I'm choosing between two jobs, one is a 15 min walk, the other with a 1 hour drive. It's going to be the 15 min walk, easy, and the 1 hour drive would need a significantly higher paycheck for me to consider it seriously.
That's this section right here
I count any time I spend getting to this job and back as unpaid labor and thus it counts against the total pay.
My commute sucks ass. With traffic it's about 3 1/2 hours a day in the car.
But I do get a $300/month gas stipend and the job does pay about $16/hr more than I made doing a similar job with about 2 hours a day in traffic. So the money part works out. I also live alone, so there's less reason to want to spend more time at the house than if I had a family.