🏠 Work From Home Savings Calculator
Compare your typical commuting costs against working from home to see your estimated savings.
How the saving is built up
Three daily costs are added, multiplied by the days you would have travelled, and then stretched over a month and a year:
daily = gas + parking + eating out
weekly = daily × commute days per week
monthly = weekly × 4.33
yearly = weekly × 52The defaults - $8 of fuel, $5 of parking and $10 on lunch, five days a week - give $23 a day, $115 a week, $497.95 a month and $5,980 a year. The 4.33 is a rounded 52 ÷ 12, so twelve of those months come to $5,975.40 rather than $5,980.
Keeping the number honest
- 52 weeks assumes you never take a day off. Holidays, public holidays and sick days already keep you at home, so with four weeks of leave the realistic year is nearer 48 weeks and the saving about 8% lower.
- Fuel is not the cost of the car. Insurance, tax, depreciation and most maintenance carry on whether you drive to an office or not. They only fall if the mileage drop is big enough to change your cover or let you run one car instead of two.
- Home has its own bill. Heating, cooling and electricity all day, plus the groceries replacing that $10 lunch, claw back part of the total.
Frequently asked questions
How much does commuting cost per year?
On the figures here, $23 a day for five days is $5,980 a year. Work out your own with daily cost times commute days times 52, then shave off the weeks you are on leave.
Why is the monthly saving not the yearly divided by twelve?
The month is priced at 4.33 weeks, a rounded 52 ÷ 12. It leaves the twelve months about $4.60 short of the annual figure - immaterial for a budget, but worth knowing the two rows are not derived from each other.
Does working from home really save this much?
The gross figure is real; the net one is smaller. Utilities, home groceries and fixed car costs eat into it, so the reliable savings are the ones that vanish completely, like daily parking.