Appreciation post: A retired accountant at my coffee shop changed how I track mileage

I was complaining to my barista about dreading tax season, and this older guy next to me chimed in. He said I was treating my car like a toy, not a tool, and that I should log every single trip, even the ones to the post office for shipping. That hit different because I always skipped those little errands, thinking they weren't worth the hassle of writing down. Last month I added up all those skipped stops from my bank statements and it was 212 miles I just let slide. He also said to keep a small notebook in the glove box instead of relying on apps, since they forget the stops you make in a parking lot before you even start the engine. Has anyone else found that tiny trips add up more than the big client drives? I'm curious if that matches what other freelancers see here.

2 comments

2 Comments

shane1702d ago

Hold up, 212 miles just from little errands? That's wild. I would have guessed maybe 50 tops, but when you break it down, every trip to the bank or the hardware store really does stack up. And @the_laura, the Sunday odometer thing is genius, but honestly the phone calculator thing scares me a little. I forget what I had for breakfast, let alone trust my phone to remember a string of numbers. That glove box notebook is the real MVP though, because I swear the second I open an app, I get distracted and end up checking my email instead of logging the trip.

the_laura2d ago

That "treating your car like a tool" line is spot on. I started doing the same thing but went one step further, I log the odometer reading on my phone's calculator app every Sunday night so I have a hard baseline to check against the notebook. It's crazy how those 5 minute trips to the drugstore are usually the ones that slip through the cracks and add up faster than the big highway runs.