Costs for everyday activities: Cooking a meal is $0.025 to $0.5 per meal; running a fridge $40/a and $240/a ; Washing a load of clothes $1.55 to $1.75 plus time costs; Taking a shower $0.5 to $1.4 plus time costs; bicycling $15/month or $0.08/km plus time costs. Variation is largely caused by widely varying electricity prices.

Occasionally I wonder whether certain obscure expenses actually matter on my bills, and I'm 100% certain you do, too. So I collected some numbers:

Occasionally I wonder whether certain obscure expenses actually matter on my bills (and thus it would make sense to reduce them) , and I'm 100% certain you do, too. So I collected some numbers:

Electricity $0.025 to $0.5 per meal, water insignificant.

Of course you know that food isn't free, but how expensive is heating it? I can say confidently that a proper 1-person meal for me costs at least 0.25 KWh of electricity. I know that because I have an induction stove and know the power consumption of each of its "burners" and I set a stopwatch to make sure I don't overcook my meal. Basmati rice is done in just 7 minutes, so the majority of the energy is needed just for boiling the water. Other meals take longer, but nothing I make would need more than 0.5 KWh . Water is also needed, but only about 2 liters . The cost of the water is dwarfed by the electricity cost and the electricity cost would range from $0.025 to $0.5, assuming electricity prices between $0.1 and $0.5 per KWh . So you see that even with expensive electricity, the cost of cooking the meal is only a small part of the total cost of the meal. A gas stove is of course much less efficient, but gas is also much cheaper per unit of energy, so these effects would likely cancel out approximately. I don't have a gas stove, so I can't check. A rice cooker is probably more efficient than a stove for cooking rice, but I don't have that either.

For a 1-person fridge, electricity between $22/a and $220/a, cost of the fridge itself around $18/a.

My fridge originally was supposed to use around 220 KWh per year. Thanks to ice buildup and a worn-out pump, it might be less efficient now, but I know that the PSU of the fridge can't pull more than 50 Watts , so the fridge can't use more than 438 KWh per year. Again assuming between $0.1 and $0.5 per KWh , the cost would be between $22 and $220 per year. This is for 1 person, a larger household would need a larger fridge, but probably at most proportional to the number of people, so the cost per person should be the same or lower. An interesting question is how the price of the electricity compares to the price of the fridge itself. I don't have the receipt handy, but an almost identical fridge costs around $410 now. I have the device for over 15 years now, and so even with the lowest estimate for the electricity cost and taking into account inflation, by now I have paid more for the electricity than for the fridge. Realistically, I think I paid more than 3x. This makes it clear that looking for a more efficient fridge is a good investment if it's foreseeable that the new fridge won't be replaced for at least a couple of years.

Water + electricity between $0.3/load and $0.5/load , washing powder, descaler, fabric softener adds around $0.25/load , cost for washing machine around $1/load , time cost for 10 minutes at US federal minimum wage $1.2/load .

My washing machine's manual tells me that it uses 0.63 KWh of electricity and 55 liters of water for one load of washing clothes at 40° C . I usually use an economy mode and I can't find exact numbers for that combination of modes, but for other modes, activating economy mode saves around 20% electricity & water. Assuming between $0.1/KWh and $0.5/KWh , electricity and water together will cost between $0.3 and $0.5. Washing powder, descaler, fabric softener adds around $0.25. But what about depreciation of the washing machine itself? Taking inflation into account, my current washing machine would have cost around $400 and I have that trooper for 15 years already with 0 problems so far. Assuming a load every 2 weeks, that means around $1 per load. So around $1.55 and $1.75 in total. Other users might have to add repair costs or replacement costs and dirtier clothes might require more washing powder, so my costs are probably a lower bound. On the other hand, other users might have to wash their clothes much more frequently and so the cost of the machine is amortized over more loads, but that would also increase wear and might cause higher repair/replacement costs. If you add the time required to load the machine, turn it on and then hang the clothes to dry, fold them and put them away - at least 10 minutes in total - then even at US federal minimum wage of $7.25/h, at least $1.2 have to be added.

Water between $0.5/shower and $1.4/shower , time cost for 10 minutes at US federal minimum wage $1.2/shower .

Taking a shower with a really low-flow showerhead might use 40 liters, but an old high-flow showerhead and/or taking a long shower can easily use 120 liters . I might use 80 liters and at my water prices that would lead to between $0.5 and $1.4 per shower or $0.9 in my case. There is a bit of assumption, because I only know my costs for cold and hot water and of course I don't shower at maximum or minimum temperature. I assumed a 2/3 hot and 1/3 cold mixture to arrive at those prices. If all of it takes 10 minutes, you can add at least $1.2 in time costs. Soap isn't free either, but it's so cheap that the cost per shower is insignificant.

Bicycle used almost weekly for 11 years, braking pads replaced many times, chain + rear sprocket replaced by repair shop at least 5 times, saddle, brake cable, front light, steering fork, entire rear wheel and other minor things replaced, bike tube replaced only once thanks to "indestructible" tires. That results in around $15/month or $0.08/km . Cost for additional food disappears into measurement noise.

Transportation in my case means bicycle. There are quite a few people spreading ridiculous misinformation about bicycling and its cost (in particular I remember someone claiming his nutrition cost doubled due to switching to using a bicycle) , and so I think setting this straight is particularly important. I have my current bike for over 11 years and use it every week. During my last job, I used it at least 5 days per week, so it got plenty of use. Consequently, it required quite a few repairs over these 11 years. I replaced the brake pads many times, had the repair shop replace the chain & rear sprocket at least 5 times, had them replace saddle, brake cable, front light, steering fork, entire rear wheel (including hub gear) and other minor things. I also had to replace the bike tube once due to age. You'd expect the tubes to fail much more often, but I bought the bike with "indestructible" tires and that investment paid off. These tires are more expensive, but so thick that you can drive through glass shards without worries. The sum of the price of all repairs is by now slightly higher than the price of the bike itself, but not by much.

That results in a total monthly cost of around $15. Measured by distance traveled, the price is around $0.08/km . There are no additional costs apart from maybe time. I pay no taxes or insurance on the bike, I don't need a licence, obviously a bike needs no fuel and despite some naysayer's claims, the cost for additional food is immeasurably small. A human on a bike is just about the most energy-efficient way of moving humans around, even more efficient than walking (which of course means that biking is worse for losing weight than walking or running) . The main resistance to overcome most of the time is rolling resistance, which is the smallest type of friction - at least if you have enough pressure on your tires. Having to break for red lights and other obstacles also costs energy, but red lights don't sneak up on you and so you can anticipate them and simply coast instead of slamming on the brakes. Turbulent air friction becomes important at high speeds, but trying to break speed records is pointless in cities due to frequent red lights. An extra 600 kcal/h is realistic and my commute was 1 hour per day. Normal consumption for a man is around 2600 kcal/d , and so 600 extra is not a lot. In my experience, there was no noticeable difference in my food intake during week days compared to weekend days, so either my consumption was even lower than these assumed 600 kcal or I gained weight on weekends and lost it again on week days. More importantly, since I quit my last job and cycled a lot less, I didn't gain weight and didn't observe an appreciable difference in financial expense for food, so whatever the difference is, it is too small for me to notice and too small to have an important impact.

Compared to car, I lose around 10 minutes for a 30 minutes ride, leading to time costs of at least $0.2/km . Tram is 4x as expensive as bike.

The additional time needed compared to driving a car can not be ignored, because I definitely can't keep up with cars at full speed. But almost all distances I bike within my city can be covered in 30 minutes and for those distances, the time lost is unlikely to amount to more than 10 minutes. I get driven around in other people's cars occasionally and so I can compare the time needed. The main thing slowing cars and bikes down are red lights and these enforce an essentially constant average speed for most traffic participants. I often see cars accelerate ahead of me when the traffic light turns green, only to stand next to them again at the next red light. I arrive after them, but we all have to wait for the lights to turn green, so the small head-start becomes meaningless. Only if the distance between traffic lights is large can the car skip ahead one traffic light cycle, because I can't make it in time before the light turns red again. At my usual average 12 km/h , I would have to add 1.67 min/km of extra time compared to a car with an average of 18 km/h (based on my assumption of 10 minutes lost for a 30 minute ride) . At the USA federal minimum wage of $7.25/h , that would amount to around $0.2/km extra, significantly more than the financial cost of $0.08/km . But on the other hand, cars usually require at least $0.3/km , so the calculation is only in favor of cars for high earners. And this calculation also completely ignores the health effect, which was one main reason why I switched to bicycle, and ignores additional time for finding a parking space, which is very scarce for cars, but rarely an issue for bikes. The comparison to tram is even less favorable, because that costs at least 4x as much as the bike, isn't available everywhere (requiring additional walking time) , drives infrequently outside main business hours and is occasionally full of some obnoxious people. And of course, a place to sit is available only outside the busier hours.

Easily half the cost of bicycling is caused by theft, so in a theft-free world, $7/month might be possible.

Interestingly, the largest expense cause for bikes is theft. I bought my current bike because the previous one was stolen. It is hard to say how long I would have used the previous one had the theft not occurred, but I had that previous bike less than 5 years and am still using the current one after over 11 years, so I assume the stolen bike still had plenty of life left in it. I can also ascribe the cost of my bike lock to theft, because without theft risk I obviously wouldn't have bought it (there was a time in my country where people did in fact not lock all bikes, as the theft risk was low) . The replacement of my steering fork was also caused indirectly by a failed theft attempt (that would be a longer story, but I can guarantee that I would still use the old fork had the theft attempt not taken place) . And of course every second spend locking and unlocking the bike and carrying it inside/outside of my basement can also be ascribed to theft. Without theft risk, I would simply leave it outside at any convenient place and would save time. In particular the carrying inside/outside the basement easily costs 2 minutes per trip and so over time, I have probably lost over 70 hours to that. At minimum wage, that alone is worth $500. But counting only the steering fork, the bike lock and half of the cost of my current bike, I come to $700. If I count the full cost of the bike, more than half of my bike related costs in the past 11 years are caused by theft. In other words, in a theft-free world, my transportation costs could probably be as low as $7/month .