Ride-hailing apps have made it easy to get an inexpensive ride around town. But after fees and tips, your Uber or Lyft rides can quickly add up to a considerable portion of your budget. Both services have even less-expensive options of getting a ride, offering you a discount for sharing your route with other users who are going the same way. But choosing an UberPool or a Lyft Shared ride can add considerable time to your trip, and you may not feel like chatting with strangers on your way home from the airport or dinner party. You can still save by looking for opportunities to share rides with people you know.
It takes a little extra time to plan who’s going to meet where in order to make the trip efficient, but you were probably going to spend a bunch of time texting those people anyway. You might as well spend a few minutes figuring out how you can all spend less money on transportation.