Is telecommuting an option?

After being back from sabbatical for three days, I feel like I am back in the swing of things. I already have a trip to California scheduled for later this month and a ton of things to keep me busy. I have to give credit to those on my team that filled in for me while I was away. Without them, my return would have been a much rougher experience.

Everything at home is also getting back to normal, which is a terrible way to describe a life with four kids. There isn’t much that is normal, but I love every minute of it. Beth had to run to Houston tonight to pick up our nieces and nephew. The plan is for me to get the kids off to school and go on to work. Emma isn’t feeling well, so I may be working from home with a sick kid. That’s the beauty of the internet though; I can work anywhere I can get an internet connection. All of my phone numbers route to a single cell phone, so the transition from the office to the home office is nearly seamless. This brings me to another topic: Gas Prices.

I was talking with my life-long friend Aaron tonight about the cost of commuting. I did some numbers in the back of my head while we were talking but I wanted to see what the real numbers were. I opened up Excel and here are the results. I drive 26 miles one way to get to work with an average mpg of 16. (I know this is low, but I love my Suburban.) With gas at $3.20 per gallon and assuming I drive to work 5 days per week for 50 weeks each year, my annual cost for gas just to get to work is $2,600. By working from home just one day per week, I can save around $520 per year and reduce the miles on my car from 13k per year to 10.4k per year. That sounds like a pretty compelling argument to start working from home when possible.