I’m talking about petrol…fuel….gas. That go-juice that gets me to and fro. You see this topic has been on my mind greatly this past few weeks. Mostly because Mr. Numbers and I had a conversation that went something like this:
Mr. Number: Gas costs $3 dollars a gallon expected to be $4 by summer
Me: No kidding!! I just filled the van for $55 yesterday.
Hubby: Yeah I’m filling the truck almost every five days now (me mentally $75 per tank - hoo sheesh that’s where the money goes)
Us: Maybe we should start watching our gas costs more.
So we set a goal that we would diligently try to make a tank (or #280 miles) go two weeks in the van. Which puts my “travel budget” at about $100 or so per month. Which sounds like a lot right? Until you figure out that that’s really only about TWO tanks of gas. TWO. That’s it!
At $3.09/gallon which is what I paid on Saturday I got 18 gallons of gas which equated to $55.62. And hopefully…HOPEFULLY that will get me at least to next week. But the caveat is that to make this whole budget the gas/miles thing work:Every mile I drive has to count. And trips have to be condensed, limit or really fruitful.
So I filled up Saturday March 15th and I re-filled last night March 27th really do late in the day that’d I’ll consider it the 28th. We didn’t do to bad considering we had two extra West Des Moines trips this last two weeks. So all in all it wasn’t to bad from a usage standpoint. But this is going to take sometime to get used to condensing trips and redefining what “into town” means.
Tags: economy
March 28th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
You have it much worse than we do, we are planning on using the bikes not just for entertainment, but transportation, this summer. I don’t think I’d want to ride a bike from your house to the library though!
March 28th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I am happy that I am in town with the price of gas. While I would love to get away from my crazy neighbor that I found sitting on my privacy fence today, it is nice to be so close to things like the store, library, and museums. Later on, we’ll have to plan a play date out at your place or at the park that is close to you. You’ll just have to let others do the driving sometimes.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Yep, that’s the conversation we’ve been having. Except for Evil Dad’s Saturn getting way better gas mileage than my minivan. It’s times like this that I hate living out in the middle of nowhere. At least we can walk to the library - but that’s about it…