This is how much your long commute is costing you

How 15 minutes can cost you more than you realize

Kai Wong

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Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash

Have you ever stopped to think about how much your morning commute costs?

You pay for gas, insurance or a public transit card. But that’s not the only way that you pay for them.

Commutes rank dead last in terms of what people perceive as good for their emotional well-being.

Long commutes have negative health effects, such as high blood pressure, lower back pain, obesity, and even shorter life spans.

But given the choice between a higher salary or a shorter commute, people overwhelmingly choose the job with a higher salary.

It’s not that people can’t do the math: it’s that they can’t see the total impact. 15 minutes extra on your commute doesn’t seem like much.

But here’s the math behind why that’s a bad choice.

The hidden psychology of a longer commute

People tend to overestimate the impact of salary, while they underestimate the impact of commuting.

The Harvard Business Review conducted a study to examine this effect.

When given the choice between 2 jobs, one making $67,000 with a commute of 50…

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Kai Wong

7xTop writer in UX Design. UX, Data Viz, and Data. Author of Data-Informed UX Design: https://tinyurl.com/2p83hkav. Substack: https://dataanddesign.substack.com