Working From Home - Saving Money

My company recently announced that most of the local area employees would permanently work from home. The offices were originally slated to open back up in early 2021, but the decision has been made to continue with the virtual offices.  

Some of my friends and co-workers were disappointed with this decision.  They enjoy the interaction of their fellow employees. They like being part of a larger community during the day. I get that. Even though I have always preferred working from home, I understood that I was in the minority with my thinking most of the time.

I want to give you all food-for-thought on working from home.  You save money.  And, possibly more than you think.

• Eating at home
• John and I generally took our lunch to work, but we estimated we ate out once a week, which was normally $15. Eating at home (or even taking your lunch to work) is approximately $2-5. Let's estimate that at saving $12 a week.  That is $600 a year (with two week's off for vacation).
• Gas
• We used to fill our tanks at least once a week, sometimes twice a week.  Working from home, we fill up maybe once a month.  We estimate a tank at $25 for ease of the math.  This is a savings of $75.  For our two cars, that is $150 per month or $1,800 per year.
• Clothes / Accessories
• Let's face it, neither of us gets dressed up to sit at the computer at ome.  We might toss on a polo or dress shirt for video calls, but we are not putting on dress pants, socks and nice shoes. Our clothing allowance was approximately $1,500 per year/per person.  I think last year we maybe spent $500 for both of us.  For me, working from home also means buying less makeup, purses, jewelry, and hair products.  We estimate we save approximately $2,800 per year.
• Insurance
• My car and home owners insurance gave me a discount when I informed them we were working from home.  We bundle all of this with other policies, but we believe we save approximately $250 a year.
• Car Maintenance
• We need fewer oil changes since we base our oil changes on mileage. There is less chance of getting a flat tire, needing brake repair or just general wear/tear on our cars. We also don't pay to wash our car as much, since they don't leave the garage as often. This one is hard to put a dollar amount to, but based on rough estimates, we save about $1,000 a year.

Overall, we estimate that we are saving at least $6,450.  One year end financial report I ran, when we both worked from home originally, we had actually saved right at $9,000 that year. 

I hope maybe this helps ease the pain of working from home for some of you.  

If you want to review some other helpful hints for working from home, please check out my blog, "Working From Home - Simple Helpful Hints".