Why Would Anyone Ever Want A Two-Hour Commute, When They Can Do It In 30 Seconds?

Connie Corporate Worker in Northern Virginia sets her alarm for 5 a.m. She quietly tiptoes out of the room to go jump on her home treadmill for 30 minutes, then takes a quick shower, dresses in a pricey “power suit” to convey a good corporate image, and heads to the kitchen for a quick—often unhealthy—breakfast. She throws together lunches for herself and her family, and ticks off her list of things that need to be done before she leaves for work. Pressure mounts as she watches the clock and has to prod other family members out of bed and downstairs in time to get last-minute communicating done. She may have to leave before the school bus comes to avoid the worst rush-hour traffic congestion. When one of her children is not feeling well, she is torn between conflicting obligations and commitments. The drive to work is long and stressful. It would only take her 15 minutes during the day, but during rush hour, her commute is 45 minutes each way. One small traffic accident can make her late. She arrives at work, parks in a lot or garage, and walks to her office. If the weather is rainy or cold, she must deal with it and dress appropriately. She starts her work day tense and tired. It’s hard to hide this when she talks to clients and business associates.

Wanda Work-At-Home sets her alarm for 6 a.m. and pulls on a bathrobe. She has at least a half hour of solitude before others in the family arise—time to think about the day, time to get organized, time to wake up slowly. She can devote her full attention to each family member and their needs and concerns before they leave for the day. When everyone is out of the door, she can easily get her 30 minutes of exercise and shower and put on something comfortable. She may still have time to read, write letters, or do errands before “office hours.” If one of the children is not feeling well, she does not have to figure out who to call or what to do. Around 9 a.m., she takes a 30-second stroll to her home office to begin work for the day, refreshed, enthusiastic, and calm. It’s hard to hide this when she talks to clients and business associates.

The hour and a half that Connie Corporate Worker spends commuting is seven and a half hours a week or 375 hours a year. That is 15 days a year of Connie’s life devoted to commuting. Can you imagine all the things that she could do with those extra 15 days? 

The Home Business Phenomenon - Look at the Numbers

Data taken from the long form of the U.S. Census Bureau surveys for 1990 and 2000 indicate that the average one-way commute for employees in the U.S. increased by over 13% to over 25 minutes. Many parts of the country show one-way commute times of 50 or more minutes or between an hour and a half to two hours per day. In a recent poll in the U.K., 25% of the 2,461 respondents said that their commute was more than one hour, while another 22% said theirs was between 40 and 60 minutes, each way.

Other global trends have also been taking place to impact employment trends. In Annual Report of the USA, Meredith Baxby reports that “according to a New York Times poll, nearly three-quarters of all households experienced a close encounter with a lay-off since 1980, and one-third actually lost their jobs. Job dislocation is spreading to include nearly every sector of the economy.” The revolution in information technology has also fueled the ability to work effectively and efficiently from home, either as an employee or as a self-employed individual.

Is it any wonder that the migration of employed workers to self-employed home-based business owners is now being called a "Phenomenon" and that the 1990s have been called the Decade of the Entrepreneur? U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) sources indicate that there are approximately 24 million small businesses in the U.S. According to a report on the Cooperative Extension System Website, Census Bureau figures show that “nearly half of the small businesses in the U.S. are home-based. Small business ownership is the tool millions of Americans use to enter the economic and social mainstream.” The Community Resources and Economic Development (CRED) group, a base program of the Cooperative Extension System, says that U.S. small businesses:

• Are home-based 53% of the time and are franchises 3% of the time.
• Provide virtually all of the net new jobs added to the economy.
• Represent 99.7% of all employers.
• Employ 53% of the private work force.
• Employ 38% of the private workers in high-tech occupations.
• Provide 47% of all sales in the country.
• Provide 55% of innovations.
• Account for 35% of federal contract dollars.
• Represent 96% of all U.S. exporters.

This home-business phenomenon is not just in the United States. The total number of home-based businesses in New South Wales, Australia, grew 17% between 1999 and 2001. Similar growth has occurred in Canada, Asia, and other parts of the world.

In a fascinating study for the SBA entitled “Homebased Business: the Hidden Economy,” Joanne H. Pratt concluded: “Homebased businesses have a high survival rate and should be recognized for their contribution to the economy...This report demonstrates that this activity [owning a home-based firm] is much more significant than previously thought. Clearly, the home became a hotbed of entrepreneurship during the 1990s, combining income, lifestyle choices, and significant profits and revenues.”

The True Cost of Working Outside the Home

In their classic book, Your Money or Your Life, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin remind us that to compare our true income from employment versus working at home, we must go way beyond a comparison of our salary versus our income as a self-employed person. The true cost of working outside the home must include expenditures we would not have to make if we were not employed:

• Automobile operating costs to and from work
  
• Parking
  
• Professional wardrobe, dry cleaning, and attire for special events
  
• Daycare or baby sitters
  
• Personal care expenses that might not be needed as often if working from home (beauty parlor, manicures, barber, etc)
  
• Eating out more often and the $3 cappuccino or Chai tea from the Starbucks across the street from work
  
• Entertaining co-workers, clients, and bosses

Be sure to factor in the “keep up with the Joneses” mentality that often pushes us to dine or vacation in more expensive places than we might if we didn’t hear about them from our co-workers. These employment-related expense items can easily amount to thousands of dollars a year, so you could earn a lot less than your salary from a home-based business without sacrificing any disposable income.

Placing a Value on Happiness and Peace of Mind

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. —Henry David Thoreau

How can you even measure the physical and psychological cost of the additional stress and loss of peace of mind that comes with employment? Besides those mentioned above, you should consider the stresses involved with pleasing your boss, worrying about layoffs, promotions, and raises, as well as tensions over office politics and between co-workers. Dominguez and Robin suggest that the cost of the things we have and buy should be measured not in dollars, but in the life energy we expend to earn the dollars required to own or buy them. Their formula for calculating that is beyond the scope of this article, but it provides a valuable exercise, especially when weighing the cost of employment versus working from home.

Some would further argue that the cost of stress-relieving activities—saunas, massages, weekend trips, extra drinking and eating, or even counseling and psychiatric services—might not be necessary if the work environment were more conducive to relaxation, happiness, and fulfillment.

These considerations are, of course, extremely subjective, and while the “short commute” is an attention-grabbing benefit of working from home, it represents many quality-of-life benefits that are very real and should be seriously included when you weigh the value of having your own home-based business.