Carpooling: A Great Way to Save on Transportation Expenses

Have you tried carpooling? If not, do you know someone who often engaged in this kind of travel arrangement?

Wikipedia defines carpooling as “the sharing of car journeys” – the goal is for more than one person to travel in one car and removes the necessity for other car owners to drive to a location themselves. Merriam-Webster defines it as “an arrangement in which a group of people commute together by car .” It is also termed as car-sharing or ride-sharing although the latter now more often refers to services provided by Grab or Uber.

Based on the above definitions, carpooling happens when a person shares his car with other people who are also going to the same place and will also leave at the same time. In our local setting, carpooling normally exists in subdivisions outside Metro Manila where transportation is not yet accessible or its cost is very high.

The best thing about carpooling is that you can save a lot. The money saved can be deposited in a savings account such as GCash GSave or CIMB.

Carpooling: How is it done?

Carpoolers (people who share their car) and carpool passengers form groups on social media which could be Facebook or Facebook Messenger. These groups normally came from FB groups of people living in subdivisions with a high-density population. Both carpoolers and passengers post invitations or intentions to join a carpool before the scheduled date and time. Responses to these posts can be thru comments, Messenger, or SMS.

Carpooling posts may include the following:

• Date, Day 
• Expected time of departure
• Pickup Location
• Destination
• Route
• Car type
• Available slots

Other ways of carpooling are done via mobile apps. The popular app for this was Wunder but it ceased operation a few weeks ago.

How much can be saved?

Below are the daily expenses when I use our car in going to work. These may go lower or higher depending on the current fuel price. Also, maintenance costs are not included which is higher when a car is used daily.

• Parking – Php 200.00
• Toll – Php 265.00
• Fuel (estimated) – Php 200
• Total – Php 665 (Estimated)

On the other hand, below is the daily expense when carpooling:

• Share – Php 200.00 based on 100.00 share per ride.

How much do I save? As you will note, it’s 70% of my daily transportation expense! When computed on a monthly or yearly basis, it a good amount of money to be spent on other important things.