Tracking the “dough-lers”…
Whenever I buy a pass, I immediately start doing the math. I need to know if I’m getting my money’s worth.
Gym membership? I mentally keep track of how many times I go and calculate the cost per visit. Ski pass? Same thing. I want to know exactly what each day of skiing cost me. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching that number drop. It turns recreation into a very boring accounting exercise, which apparently is how I like to have fun now.
This week I added a new one: Divvy.
Divvy is Chicago’s bike-share program. I bought an annual membership, which gives me 45-minute rides on regular bikes for free, plus reduced rates on e-bikes and scooters.
There was a promotion, so my one-year membership cost $99.
And the clock immediately started.
On Monday, I took a regular Divvy bike to an activity and rode one home. Two rides.
Cost per ride: $49.50.
Not great. But this is a long game.
The next day, I went to the gym and took a Divvy scooter home. That ride cost me an additional $1.56, bringing my total Divvy investment to $100.56.
However – and this is the important part -I now had three rides.
Cost per ride: $33.52.
Look at that. In 24 hours, I had slashed my transportation costs by almost a third.
Of course, I couldn’t leave it there. I calculated the minutes, too.
So far, I’ve used Divvy for 51 minutes, which puts me at approximately $1.97 per minute.
Again, terrible.
If someone offered me transportation for $118 an hour, I would probably decline.
But I’ve had the membership for less than a week. These are merely the startup costs. Every time I climb onto one of those free regular bikes, the number drops a little more.
And now I have a goal.
Not to exercise more. Not to reduce my carbon footprint. Not to explore Chicago by bike. Those would all be reasonable goals. No. I want to drive that cost-per-ride number into the ground. I want to reach the point where every Divvy ride costs me pennies. I want Divvy executives looking at my account and wondering if perhaps they made a terrible mistake.
So I’ll keep track and post an update here every now and then.
Current standings:
Total spent: $100.56
Total rides: 3
Cost per ride: $33.52
Total riding time: 51 minutes
Cost per minute: $1.97
Those numbers are going down. This may eventually become the cheapest transportation I’ve ever had. Or I may spend $99 on a bike membership and lose interest by October.
That’s why we track the dollars.