calculating the cost of driving, is important for determine your paycheck spent on driving, which maintenance and includes fuel costs to get a good idea of the most basic costs.
@ Fuel Costs:
- determine fuel expenses by record the number of miles or kilometers on the odometer when the fuel tank is nearly empty.
- Fill the tank when it is near empty. without top off the tank.
- Refill the tank when it is near empty again and record the number of gallons it took to fill.
- Check the odometer again at refilling and subtract the old number on the odometer from the - - new number to see how far your car went.
- record the difference between the two odometer readings. If the number was 30,000 miles when you filled the tank the first time and 30,300 when you refilled,this means that you drove 300 miles with 1 tank of gas.
- Divide the number of miles or kilometers you drove by the number of gallons it took to refill your tank. For ex, if you drove 300 miles and burned 15 gallons of gasoline, your vehicle got about 20 miles per gallon.
- Divide the distance driven in a month by the miles per gallon. (If your car has 30,000 miles and is 40 months old, the car drove about 750 miles per month.) In this hypothetical example, divide 750 by 20 gallons to get the number of gallons you burn per month: 37.5 gallons.
- Multiply the total amount of fuel per month by the cost of a gallon of gasoline to get your monthly fuel costs. If gas costs $4 per gallon, you spend $128 per month on fuel, or 17 cents per mile.
@ Maintenance:
- Add up what you spend in a year on oil changes, tires and other maintenance and car repair bills.
- Divide this total by 12 to get the monthly total. If the total is (ex) $1,890 per year, the monthly cost for maintenance, repairs is $157.50 per month.
- Add inspection and registration costs for a year and divide by 12. If the total is $100 per year, the monthly cost is $8.33.
@ Costs of Driving:
- Add the monthly totals for fuel ($128 in the example); maintenance, repairs and insurance ($157.50 a month); and inspection and registration ($8.33) to see how much it costs to drive the car per month.
- Divide vehicle operation costs, $293.83 per month by the distance you drive per month, 750 miles in the ex, to calculate the cost per mile. The cost per mile for this driver and vehicle is 39.17 cents per mile.
Note that the costs in this calculation do not include finance charges drivers pay to buy the vehicle, travel time, depreciation of the car's value, accidents, parking and tolls, and societal costs of taxes and other costs from factors such as road construction and pollution abatement.
