Rising Fuel Prices vs Rising Rents: What Hurts More?

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:06]But now we're going to talk about what uh you know our prime minister Narendra Modi has recently come out and said he said that try to save fuel right because uh like I just mentioned right crude is becoming expensive and for India to kind of reserve their foreign reserves. It's important for us also to kind of contribute towards that and save fuel.

[00:00:27]Uh to so the so the message that we got from Prime Minister Narendra Modi was that try local commute, try pooling cars together, try work from home. So I thought that you know we should come out with with a topic that we we can talk about, right? And the topic was that we can rather spend a little more on rent by saying closer to your work and spend less on traveling. That's something that we can explore. And uh I thought that why not have a conversation around this and to talk about exactly this we're joined by Vinit Ayer who's the principal officer and MD at Prouina of wealth who's joining us now. Vinit thank you so much first of all for for taking out the time you know this is just a random topic that we that I thought that we should explore but it it is certainly an interesting one right spending a little more on rent maybe living closer to where you work and spending less on commute. Do you think that makes sense?

[00:01:19]>> I mean it depends. First of all, thank you for having me here. Uh this entire uh debate depends upon what's your preference, right?

[00:01:26]>> Right.

[00:01:26]>> If if you're actually doing the uh shifting towards your office just because you want to save on fuel, the math doesn't add up. Just to give you a context, uh just recently there's a 3 rupees increase in the price of diesel and petrol. And if I do a basic math, if someone is traveling about 20 kilometers a day for 5 days a week, that's about 100 kilometers um or 40 km, that's about 200 km a week. Uh so if you look at the fuel cost, it's increased by 3 rupees.

[00:01:55]So 200 km will require approximately 20 liters of fuel. So per liter it has gone up by 3 rupees. So about 60 rupees is the increase in the weekly petrol cost.

[00:02:05]And if you sum it up on a on a monthly basis, just 240 rupees. So just because your fuel cost monthly has gone up by about 240 rupees doesn't make sense to uh stay closer to the office and pay that higher rent. The reasons for staying close could be different and I've got another context to it which I'll speak.

[00:02:24]>> Sure. Go ahead. You can you can share that with us.

[00:02:27]>> Okay. So so the context would be um the time that you are spending to commute is actually the time that you can save and do many things. For example, let's say a person earns about a lack of rupees a month. Uh so if you look at the daily earning considering a 22 days, 22 working days in a month, the average daily income comes about 4,500. If you divide that further by 8 hours of working, it comes about 550 rupees per hour. So if someone is spending about 2 hours daily on commute, he's actually spending about 1,100 rupees of his uh time worth. And if you extrapolate that over a one month period that is a 22 working days period it comes to about 24 25,000 rupees. Now if someone is keen on saving on those two hours worth of time and utilizing that maybe do some side gigs spend some more family time with the family or do some self-arning then maybe it's worth thinking about shifting closer to office and save on that two hours and uh save on that cost. 100% that's that's a brilliant idea Vinit I must say but then okay so then then let's talk about this okay u what do you think uh okay not from a perspective of just commuting to office itself right what do you think right now is kind of hurting your pockets more is it uh the rising rents in at least tier one and tier two cities what we're seeing that rents are through the roof or is it this u you know fuel price hikes that we've been seeing in the last couple of days what is going to hurt you more going forward I think the rising rent would definitely hurt more because if you look at the increase in the petrol prices that's about three rupees some 3%. So it could be a temporary shock but if you look at the trajectory of the fuel price increase it has not actually increased in the last four years meaningfully. So if you look at an average inflation of about four 5% the the cost of petrol should have actually increased by a larger percentage which has not happened and that is also due to the fact that a good chunk of that increase in the crude oil prices the government is taking on itself by reducing the excise duty by reducing the VAT. Of course they still make a good amount of money but that 3 rupees of price increase is not a very meaningful difference in someone's budget. Of course that would definitely lead to other kinds of inflation because that becomes a reason for the other products to get pricier but comparatively if I compare I think rents would cost more as compared to the rise in the fuel prices and to my mind the fuel price increase cannot be directly compared with the kind of rent that one has to pay to stay closer to the office.

[00:05:09]Like I told you the benefits are different. you cannot be comparing on the basis of only the cost of fuel price increase.

[00:05:15]>> Okay. Uh just one last question from my end is with regards to u you know switching to something uh that you know again our prime minister Modi has said with regards to taking up local commute.

[00:05:28]Now you know this could have two legs right you you're of course saving one uh the second is that you're trying to um save in terms of fuel as well. um how does one make that decision firstly for somebody who's already been uh kind of traveling um in individually and secondly um from a perspective of um you know the hidden cost of long commutes you know you just spoke about as to how you can rather utilize that time how how would you put that into perspective >> uh see if you are talking about a um commute perspective in the sense you're using local commute uh or the public transport. Of course, there are both wins and loses. Wins in terms of of course you're um saving a little bit on the cost. Again, it depends upon the connectivity from the local commute to your end point because the problem with local commute is that commute at least if I talk about a city like Pune is that there is no last mile coverage, right?

[00:06:31]you still kind of end up spending more on an auto or a cab if you have to kind of come down from a metro and get to your office. So that connectivity is very very important for you to decide on the cost factor. Time wise again I don't think so it will be too much of a time difference in terms of if you travel on your own as well as if you are going through a metro kind of a uh route right so so there I don't see uh anything as a different in terms of the time that is consumed and costwise like I said of course you're saving on the fuel but depending upon the last mile connectivity uh you may end up spending a little more or maybe a little less than your overall cost >> all right okay uh Vinnie thank Thank you so much for taking on the time and you know helping us give your perspective on this topic and of course taking all the time and speaking with us at NV Profit.

[00:07:20]>> Thanks. Thanks very much.

[00:07:21]>> All right viewers with that we're completely out of time on this edition of your money matters but do stay tuned.

[00:07:27]More news and updates on the other side.