Wednesday, March 02, 2011

How Are You Affected By The Rising Gas Prices?

How have the rising gas prices affected your driving habits?

Since I do stay home most of the time and we only have one car, this helps tremendously with costs. However, we have still been rethinking our outings. Since we don't have a lot of wiggle room in the budget at the moment, we are planning out our trips a lot more to make the most out of them. This not only saves extra trips but also saves a lot of time,we've found.

Last week, I drove to the bank only to discover they were closed for President's Day. Bummer! All week, we kept saying that we needed to go to the bank again. But it kept getting pushed off. Finally, we just decided to wait until Friday when I'd have to go again anyways!

I think we'll be doing a lot more of this in the coming weeks. I'm within walking distance to Goodwill, another thrift store, the library, a dollar store, a park and once it opens for the season, the farmer's market. So I will walk to those if I can. Otherwise, we'll be combining trips and making extra stops for things we need if we are already out.

 This takes a bit extra planning and thinking ahead but is worth it in the long run!

How are you handling this?

4 comments:

Monica Wilkinson said...

Yikes - hasn't it gone up fast?! I just have to praise God for this: I did not want to fill up with gas on Saturday, but I was out with no children and it just made sense to go ahead and get it done. Anyway, I pulled in to the station that gives me a slight discount for using my Bi-Lo card and was shocked to see that the basic grade of gas was $2.27. Yep - every pump said the same thing - all the others were $3.44 or higher, but that low grade was only $2.27. You can believe that I pumped as much gas as I could in there! And, then David went over and filled up too. It was definitely a provision!

Unfortunately it just ended, but I also saw BP was doing a promotion where everytime in Jan and Feb you bought eight gallons of gas you got a loyalty card. If you entered five of these codes on line you get a $10 rebate card mailed to you. Due to people giving me their cards in line - I ended up getting two of these.

I guess I share all of this to: first of all give praise to God and secondly to show that He cares even about gas prices and can take care of our every need - even cheaper gas if He chooses to.

Wendi said...

Like you I am home most of the time. Chuck has stopped driving his truck to work and takes my car. I run any errands on Friday and he will take his truck if I need to go out.

I wish that I had all of those great places within walking distance! There is a Kroger that is close but there are no sidewalks going that way so it really isn't safe to walk there.

We didn't budget any additional money for gas in March. As I watch the prices continue to rise I wonder if we will keep in budget.

gail said...

great post! i love talking about this stuff. i think i will be doing alot more local stuff and instead of driving into the big town 1x a week (an hour away) will cut back to 2x a month. i think once the weather warms up and i am on the mend i'll start walking to the pharmecy, store, library and park too.

where the gas prices are really going to hurt is this summer. we were hoping to take a driving vacation, but may have to revisit that idea.

hope you're doing well mary ann!

Unknown said...

Limiting just running around because I want to.. My husband takes my car and I keep the truck. Last month I allowed $30 for the truck and HAD to make it work.. It will be the same this month..I have to plan and if I need something I will tell Russ as Walmarts is right across the street from his work..

We couldn't figure out why our taxes were so differnt. Russ never changed the exemptions and we went from 5 to 3.. Ouch..so we changed and it now they are taking more taxes out..So that is why I limit the $30 for the truck to make up for the taxes..

It is always something but God ALWAYS shows me how I can make it work..

Since kids are all grown I thought about going to work but it is useless because my pay will go to pay the taxes because it would put us in a higher tax bracket...

So I am enjoying my retirement from raising kids and love mentoring them now...what a joy it is..

Have a great day.. Lisa