Commute Calculators
Getting to work is one of the largest recurring costs most households have and one of the least examined. A tank of petrol is visible and a service bill is annoying, but the total across a year, including the depreciation, tyres, insurance and registration that a car consumes whether it moves or not, almost never gets worked out. Nor do the hours, which for a typical half-hour commute come to about six working weeks a year of unpaid time.
These calculators use the Inland Revenue kilometre rates as their default costing. Those rates are set annually, published per fuel type, and represent the full cost of running a vehicle rather than the fuel in it, which makes them the closest thing New Zealand has to an official answer. One thing to be clear about throughout: commuting is private travel, so none of this is tax deductible, and the IRD rates are used here purely as a maintained estimate of what a kilometre costs to drive.
Work out what it costs
Commute Cost Calculator
What your current trip costs over a year in running costs, parking and tolls, and how many hours it takes. The number most people are surprised by.
Drive, Bus or Cycle
The same journey costed three ways, in dollars and in hours, with a setting for whether you would keep the car anyway. That setting changes the answer more than anything else.
Is the Job Offer Worth the Commute?
Whether a pay rise survives the extra travel once tax is taken off it, and the break-even salary the offer would need to leave you no worse off.
Long Commute vs Close House
Whether the cheaper house further out stays cheaper once the extra travel is counted, over the years you would actually live there.
The vehicle behind the commute
Vehicle Running Cost Calculator
The whole cost of the car across a year, not only the part spent getting to work.
Mileage Reimbursement Calculator
The IRD kilometre rates applied to business travel, which unlike a commute can actually be claimed or reimbursed.
Vehicle Logbook Calculator
Work out the business use percentage a logbook supports, if you use one car for both.
How these fit together
Start with the commute cost calculator to find out what you are actually spending. If the answer is uncomfortable, the mode comparison shows whether another way of making the same trip is cheaper and what it costs in time. If you are weighing a move or an offer, the other two put the commute on the same side of the ledger as the salary or the house price, which is where it belongs and where it is almost never put.
All four use the same rates and the same arithmetic, from one shared file, so they cannot disagree with each other about what a kilometre costs.
Related
- What your commute really costs, the guide behind these calculators.
- What people earn where you live, for putting a salary beside a travel cost.
- What households actually spend, including the transport category.