Boon's Basement

How much do you pay for parking?

// August 13th, 2009 // Finance, Thoughts, cars

Today was an eventful day as I drove from Forest Hills to Stony Brook to meet up with my old supervisor and friend, Rose. The day was partly cloudy and there wasn’t much traffic on the Grand Central Parkway to Stony Brook which was a boon. Once I reached Stony Brook, I was reminded how unfriendly it was for visitors to find parking. Luckily, I remembered where the paid parking lots for visitors were. Instead of parking at the main lot near the Admin Building, I chose to park at the Chemistry parking lot, which has parking meters.  I inserted 6 quarters, which gave me an hour parking limit, and went ahead to visit Rose.

Two hours later, I came back and got a lovely note from Campus police, stating that I owe them $30 for an expired meter. Great, it was good catching up with Rose over lunch and now I owe the school $30. I guess, that is the price I pay when I don’t remind myself to feed the parking meter!

Instead of dwelling on my misfortune, have you ever calculated how much do you pay for parking annually, including parking garages, parking lots, parking meters, parking tickets and any cost related to parking?

Let’s start with the basic, the price of a monthly parking garage at an apartment (assuming you live in one). In Forest Hills, the garages range from $120 to $200 per month. So taking the average, it would be at $160 per month. Multiplying 12 months, the cost for a parking garage in Forest Hills is about $1920 per year.

Now for your daily commute, assuming you drive. You will need to pay for parking at work. My ex-company used to charge commuters $55 per month for parking, which is a great price compared to other companies my friends work at. So lets assume work parking is at $75 a month. Multiply that with 12 and you have to pay $900 a year.

The total so far for home and work parking is at $2820 per year. We are not done yet. We still have to consider parking cost when you go out for shopping, dinner, lunch, hair-do, doctor’s visit, etc.

Let us assume that you go out on Saturday and Sunday, averaging 3-4 hours per day. That gives you roughly 8 hours for two days we hang out on the weekends. If you are lucky, you will not have to pay for parking but if you’re unlucky or just live around a busy neighborhood such as Flushing, be prepared to pay a quarter for 15 minutes parking. We shall take Flushing’s parking rates, 25cents per 15 minutes to calculate the weekend parking cost. To spend 4 hours at Flushing, you will need to fork out $4.00. That isn’t too bad compared to what you will be spending shopping the whole day. So, for two days, it is a total of $8.00 for the weekend. A year, you pay $96.00.

Add that to the total so far, it comes to $2916 per year. We are almost done. I just need to add one or two parking tickets here and there because of an expired meter or a ticket for a no standing or no standing zone. Give and take you pay $150 worth of tickets per year, add that to the total, we have $3066 of parking related expenses per year.

Rough Estimation of the $3066 per year cost

Yearly garage parking  = $1920
Yearly work garage = $900
Yearly going out parking = $96 (not inclusive of valet, tips)
Yearly parking tickets = $150 (If you’re a careful driver)

Total = $3066

From our guesstimation, a driver, living in an apartment Forest Hills – Flushing area and who chooses to park in a garage, spends roughly $3000 a year on parking related expenses. That’s a lot of money you spend by having your car stationary. Every time you pay for parking or any expenses related to parking, note it down. By the end of the year, you will be surprised how much you are paying for having your car PARKED!

Maybe our government should create a free parking bill..

Love it, loathe it? Comments are appreciated.

-Boon