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The Pandemic Gave Me the Biggest Pay Raise of My Working Life
I don’t have the longest commute in the world, but it’s a bit more than 5 minutes also. Its regularly 45 minutes and sometimes 1 hour each way. When the pandemic struck and and our office went remote, I got 90 minutes of my life back each day, do the math, that is 7.5 hours a week, the equivalent of a whole work day for many of us. If I value my time at the hourly rate of pay that I make, that is a raise of $300/week, $1,200/month or $15,600/year.
And it didn’t cost my employer a dime!
But it gets better. I also didn’t drive my car to and from work each workday. That’s a tank of gas a week, I drive a Mazda, but that is still $60/week or so, $250 a month with rounding, or an additional $3000/year just in the fuel to get to and from the office, there is no convenient transit option for me. I also have lower maintenance costs of the car, in fact there are some months were I don’t actually drive this car at all, we are a two car family. So add in another $500 for oil changes and minor maintenance. I could go deeper and suggest less depreciation and all of that as well. I also changed my insurance to occasional use and that saved me another $1,000. Lets give it a reasonable estimate of another $6,000 for total cost of the car. My…
