Here where I live there is a public transportation called a Skytrain which is essentially a rapid transit system. A person was telling me before on how he decided to use public transportation to save money. It takes him about 10 minutes to walk to the station from his house each day which is a pain he mentions and whenever he can he tries to find someone who can drive him there instead.

While granted if your place of employment is extremely far away, then obviously you can’t just ignore using some type of transportation in the long run. But with samples like that though, it is kind of amazing on how vehicle dependent many become.

When I got my first job as a teenager I was always in that wanting to save money mentality. At the time to get to work it would take approximately five minutes with a car or about fifteen minutes with a bus. Instead, I decided to walk to work and back each time which took about thirty minutes. It helped keep me active while at the same time all that small amount of money I saved as a result really added up too.

I remember back then too whenever a manager/supervisor phoned me to ask if I could work as a result of someone not showing up I would say I would be there in about thirty minutes and not only did some of them think that was crazy for someone to walk that long, but they tried to convince me to use the transit instead. But even thinking of it from a financial point of view it wasn’t worth it as it was about $1.50 a ticket and considering the wage was about $7 an hour that meant losing about 20% of my earned money in comparing it from an hourly point of view.

As mentioned too, the savings really added up. I’ve carried on that mentality with me and I usually try to avoid using a vehicle of some sort whenever it makes sense. I still get the blank stares from some people at times as they wonder why I would want to walk say fifteen blocks when a vehicle could be used such as calling a taxi. To me, this is just one of those things that make sense to do.

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