One fault of my employer is that I get charged for parking. $647, once per year. This gives me convenient parking, in a deck right next to my building.
There’s an alternate plan, wherein I can pay $25 per year, and pay $5 each time I park a vehicle. It’s not as convenient, but is pretty close to my work.
So the pay-per-park plan has a break-even point at 126 days: if I park 126 days, it saves me money, and it I park 127 days, it costs me money. Last year, I had 227 complete work days. Using 2011 as a baseline, I would have to bike 101 days in the next year to not lose money on this scheme. Any more days than that, and I’m putting money back in my pocket. I would need to bike 44% of the time, 2.2 days per week.
Maximum possible savings: $632 (yay!). Maximum possible loss: $503 (boo!).
| % of the time I bike to work | Amount of money I save |
| 100% | $632 saved |
| 75% | $347 saved |
| 50% | $67 saved |
| 25% | $218 lost |
| 0% | $503 lost |
Nice! Now maybe map out some parameters as to what conditions would prevent you from biking to work (temp, precipitation, sickness, injury, oversleeping, extra cargo, scheduling conflicts, etc.), and figure out how often those are likely to prevent you from biking to work? Obviously, climate data are readily available; the other stuff will be a hipshot at best, but you can probably get a ballpark idea of the actual financial impact of biking. Don’t forget to include savings on gas, car maintenance, doctor bills, and so on.