Can You Give Up Gas Or Start Saving?

[Janet]

With gas prices going all over the place are any of you bothered by it? Willing to stay home, willing to pay $4.50 or more per gallon? It hasn't gotten quite that high, but it could.

I don't use a lot of gas the way it is...maybe $20 a week. I try to only go to town once a week so that doesn't give me a whole lot of fun time I am trying to save as most of you know and the thought of putting it in a gas tank just doesn't thrill me.

How are you all going to handle it?

[DianaB]

I've cut back on my driving......of course, I'm such a home body that I really don't drive anywhere very much anyway during the week. I tend to stay home with Dean. I know that we're not driving out of town to eat as much as we used to do and trips to Wal-mart are combined usually with one of the kids. And we're not driving to Wichita unless it's really needed. I'm doing more of my shopping from the department stores on line instead of driving.

With Glen being a farmer we use a lot of fuel in the tractors, trucks, and combines anyway. You can't conserve when it comes to the equipment.

[Janet]

I'm with you about staying home even more than I did. I try to make the one trip and there are times I have to run back to town. Sometimes I wish we lived just a tad bit closer to town, but still in the country.

[Marilyn]

Thankfully I drive a company truck so my gas is provided, and I can use it for reasonable personal use. I try not to abuse it. My husband however has changed from driving his big diesel F350 to driving my old 1500 Chevy truck. It gets much better gas mileage. Our poor children are being much more careful with trips out of town. We are buying more online now too rather than driving to another city for items. I really don't understand what drives the price of gasoline. We don't have a shortage at all. Please, I'm not trying to turn this political. I really don't understand and don't see that who's in charge makes much difference in gasoline anyway.

[2tiredmom]

I live 6 miles from work but it takes me 15 minutes to get there. So i take my lunch and stay at work. Then i only go to the store once a week if that much depending on if i need anything i had forgotten.
Also Hubby will not be coming home on the weekends.

[Janet]

If Gary doesn't come home on the weekends, when will you get to see each other? Maybe get a vehcile that uses much less gas? Hopefully you guys can work something out.

Marilyn, I feel the same way. I just don't understand how the gas pricing works, maybe we're not suppose to, but the fluctuation in price all the time is crazy.

[DianaB]

That's too bad, Linda. I'm sure that's disappointing.

Marilyn, I'm sure that it doesn't matter who's in office either. The oil companies are just determined to keep prices high. It will just make people look for other resources to save money. Every one is hurting.

[Lindsey]

Marilyn, I don't understand gas prices either. Here in the Canadian prairies, we are basically living over an ocean of oil. It's everywhere. Every farmer's field has oil rigs on it. From what I understand, we sell it to the US to be refined, and then buy it back for higher prices. But still, the prices fluctuate so much within a few days, it just doesn't make sense. They are using the same tank that they paid one price for, so why the fluctuations?

We can't really change our gas useage. We drive our Camry for our daily commute and it's pretty good on gas. Since we don't live in the city we can't use public transportation because we have to drive there every day to begin with. We don't really do much extra driving besides going to work, because we're boring and we just stay home lol.

[Blueyes]

We live in town, but it's a small town. Any real shopping or good doctors are at least 30 minutes away in any direction. I'll have to say that we pretty much go wherever, but there are lots of days we don't leave the house. We do tend to go in my convertible when it's just the two of us since it gets much better mileage than the Expedition.

[Janet]

Saw a 2005 Cavalier for sale in the paper and it said it got 32 mpg. I would love to get better gas mileage, but just can't afford another car right now. The cable on my garage door broke Friday and now we can't get the door open. Rick's getting a new cable today so hopefully I can get my car back in the garage soon.

[gja1000]

My garage cabale broke this past year. Gary must have been out of town, because I had to call the garage door company out to replace it. I ended up just getting new garage doors!

The price of gas is the main reason I got my Prius, but I still try to combine all my errands so I don't do so much driving.

[Janet]

Garage door is all fixed now so the van is back in the garage. I'd really like to trade it in on something that gets better gas mileage, although it doesn't do horribly. Maybe someday.

[DianaB]

The money you save not making payments can pay for a lot of gas. That's how Glen thinks anyway!!

[Janet]

I know....I do not want payments. I haven't had a car payment in probably 25 years. We always bought one wrecked, Rick fixed it, sold the other vehicle to pay for the newer one.