Yahoo Finance UK workers spend £49,000 commuting and travel 172,000 miles during their career
Commuters will spend almost £49,000 getting to the office over the course of their working life.
A third of that outlay will be spent on breakfast and takeaway coffee or tea, as the average Briton gives up a whole year of their life battling to get to work and home again.
Brits commute an average of seven miles in and out each day, which adds up to 171,080 miles over their near 50-year working life – enough to circle the globe more than six times each.
Two thirds of people will drive, one in ten take the train and 8% head out by motorbike, or bicycle.
“While many commuters think their journeys to and from work are barely worth considering, the amount of time we spend on them shows we should give them a bit more thought,” said Andy Goodson, sales and marketing director for motorcycle insurance specialists Lexham, which commissioned the research.
“With an average commute time of almost an hour a day, for many Brits this is wasted time as they’re stuck behind the wheel in traffic.
“Some of the happiest respondents in our survey were ones who were able to walk to work – giving themselves the shortest commute possible.”
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Taking a car to work was voted as the most stressful way to get to work, followed by the bus, the train and Metro or Underground systems.
Nearly half of respondents admitted to being late at least once a week, arriving an average of 10 minutes behind schedule each time.
The most common cause was bad traffic, followed by simply getting up late.
Two thirds of commuters said that if their trip to work was particularly stressful or annoying, it made the rest of their day worse.
A LIFETIME OF COMMUTING IN NUMBERS:
Distance travelled: 171,080 miles
Amount spent: £48,708.92
Time spent: 10,998 hours
Days late to work: 1,906
Newspapers read: 2248
Coffees bought: 1,759
Games played on phone: 2,077
Social events planned: 1,710
Albums listened to: 3,617
Bananas eaten: 977
