4 Hazards for Commuters

Here’s why the extra hours you spend on the road can take a serious toll on your well-being.

The Long Road Home

This article originally appeared on LearnVest.com.

We talk about work life and we talk about home life, but we rarely discuss the in-between time—your commute.

There’s good reason for that: A 2006 survey found that commuting was dead last on women’s lists of favorite activities, even below working and housework.

The minutes spent commuting add up to hours, days, and weeks out of the year. Case in point—the average American commute is about 25 minutes, and begins between 7:30 and 8:00 am. So that’s 25 minutes each way, five days per week, adding up to over 16 hours per month.

Strangely, that average 25 minutes makes American commutes one of the shortest among developed countries. Doesn’t that seem suspect? It turns out that commute length in the United States is particularly difficult to measure, due to the sheer size of the country, the discrepancy between car and public transit commutes, and possibly inaccurate methodology on behalf of the U.S. Census Bureau.

But no matter how long your trip, it’s still a commute.

And commute time and happiness are closely related. Here, we’ll break down the ways commute time can affect your relationships, wealth and well-being.