With gasoline prices skyrocketing, I knew I needed to do something to cut back.
It’s Tightwad Tuesday again, and today I’m going to tell you how we cut our gas bill over the last few months. With gas prices over $3.00 a gallon and no sign of prices dropping anytime soon, my husband and I found that filling up our cars was becoming quite a drain on our budget, especially when he was working in outside sales. At one point last summer, we were paying $400 a month to drive our cars. That’s more than half our rent payment!
I decided that we needed to take drastic measures to cut back on fuel, because driving our cars was driving us straight into the poorhouse. So I adjusted our schedule accordingly.
I’ve never been a super-scheduled person. I like to go to the store to pick something up on a whim, and I found that I was making little trips here and there every day, because I was bored. I put an end to that and designated Mondays as errand running days. As soon as the bus picks my son up for school, I drop my daughter off at her school, and I head into town. I run every errand I have in succession and get home before my son gets home from preschool.
This has several benefits. First, I get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time. Second, I don’t take time to linger and lust after items I see in the stores. I’m on a tight schedule, and I don’t have the time to browse. I stick to my list and get in and out as fast as I can. Finally, it frees up other days in my week to be "no drive" days.
I try really hard to stick to my no drive days on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. By not driving 3 days a week, I’ve managed to cut down the need to fill up my gas tank from three times a month to two.
Even if you aren’t able to commit to no-drive days, there are things you can do to cut down your gas consumption.
- Carpool to work
- Bike to work (a very popular option here in Oregon)
- Take public transportation
- Walk
- Arrange carpools for the kids
- Plan your errands and your routes, so you don’t drive all over town unnecessarily
- Trade in your SUV for an economy car
What do you think? Have high fuel prices caused you to change your habits? What do you do to compensate for the high cost of gasoline? Or do you just pay the higher prices?
If you’re interested in reading more on the subject of cutting gasoline costs, Raining Change wrote an excellent post on the subject last week!
Photo by futureatlas.
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Great advice. I try to carpool with friends when I can. My only frustration is when somebody is running late. Fortunately it’s 1 person, so we plan accordingly and tell them to be 1/2 early.
Sorry, it’s supposed to be a 1/2 hour early. I need coffee. By the way, they know they run late, so they’re ok with the arrangement.
My way is just like yours. I try to get all my errands done on one day and try to avoid any driving on days that I can.
I also schedule things like Dr. appointments for the kids all at the same time, so we make one trip, instead of multiple trips over the course of a few weeks.
We are pretty rural, so we have no public transportation and there wouldn’t be many folks to carpool with, so I just try to drive as little as possible while still getting everything done.
The cost of gas is pretty high and with no drop in cost any time soon, I may end up trading in my SUV, although, I own it in full and would hate to go and get a car payment. I need to run those numbers to see if it would be worth my while.
Great post Lynnae!
Take Care
LJ
We have try to cut down on our driving too!! I try to plan my grocery trips with this in mind. Some times there is a great deals at a store but I have to keep in mind if it is worth the gas money to go for one thing!
Back when I was little my mom used to do that and it seemed quite natural and normal so this was one of the few things that I had an easy time doing when trying to learn to save money. One of the best things about it is not spending money just because I am out.
This is a good plan – right now, I drive my kids to school each day, but once school is out, I’m definitely going to give this a try. :0)
I always try to get errands run in a fashion that leads to the most direct path necessary, reducing turn arounds to 1 or 0 whenever possible. However…now here’s the freak in me…it is not a result of living frugally or trying to avoid putting more gas in the car. I just think that way! I guess that’s made me decide to be an engineer. =) I’m just too darn efficient for my own good sometimes (like last night we had cold pizza because picking it up on the way out of town was proper because of the side of the street it was own). Oh well…my husband is supposed to love me for who I am, right?
Hi Lynnae! (& everyone else!)
I’d heard that gas was supposed to go down in sometime this spring – anyone else heard that? We live in rural Texas so pretty much biking or carpooling is out of the question. I do try to combine errands when I can. My husband’s truck is the problem – he has to have it for work and it gets very low gas mileage. He’s thought about a smaller truck but then we’d have to either use our emergency fund or have a payment. Neither option is good. Plus his truck still runs fine. For a while we both just rode in his truck to work (we have a business we run together in our nearest town – 11 miles away) but then that didn’t work too good because he’d get a late call and I’d be stuck at work waiting for him when I needed to be home cooking supper – oh well..
Blessings!
USA Today had an article last week saying that since so many Americans have cut their driving because of concerns about the economy, that the Spring time gas price hike will be smaller than usual. So that is good news at least!
We’ve cut back on our trips too.
Money stuff aside, I had the thought that when I used to have to leave the house every day it was because I was lonely and bored, perhaps mildly depressed.
Now that I’m happier I almost hate leaving the house! So I spend less and get more done around the house too.
I will have to remember this when I become a stay-at-home mom! I do already try to run my errands at one time and make fewer trips to town.
Good post. This is something (gas prices and consumption) we have been dealing with for awhile also. Unfortunatly we can’t commit to no drive days with working full time and four kids in five million activities. Glad it is working for you so well!
Carla
Good idea – save money, save time – sounds like a winner. I am always looking for ways to save time and in this case, you save on both!! I need to start finding a way to apply this to my life…
This is a bit extreme for me but it shows it can be done
This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk.
In competition he got an unbelievable 150 mpg in a Prius.
Those are fabulas ways to cut down. We are doing a similar idea, which is only having one car! It was a pain at first and at sometimes inconvenient, but it cut down on those little trips, or driving across town for lunch.
We only spend $120 a month vs $300 before!
Save money at the pump and you don’t have time to shop for stuff you don’t need, that is what I call a double banger! Well done. I did not drive yet today either…but I work from home so it is a bit easier. Which is a good thing since my truck only gets 15 mpg!!
Great idea!
I know that I can easily go two weeks without filling up, so I keep in mind the date I filled up and try and ‘ration’ the gas so I can make it those two weeks.
I am struggling so much with this. We have two gas guzzlers. Older cars, big cars that we got for a song, and I have no car payments. They use an outrages amount of gas, and we drive everywhere. I hate to fill them up. I HATE it. I just don’t know where to start. I have to budget $400.00 a month for gas, but I know that I spend more than that. I just haven’t sat down with receipts to figure it out. I have tried to cut down on driving, but can’t. My dh works and goes to school so he can’t take the bus. Even though I have been trying to get him to. It would be to hard to make it to work after school. I go to school at night, and my kids have activities with church one night a week. I sometimes have gone at least 2 or 3 days without driving, but then I have a day like yesterday. We just spent the whole day out driving around and even ate out. = (.
I need to become more disciplined in this area, because its a huge part of our budget. Like you, its over half our rent, and more than our grocery budget.
Yikes,
Linda
My wife and I consider ourselves very lucky. We both work for the same company, so we are able to carpool much easier! But… we currently live 32 miles away from work, so Gas is STILL a huge expense for us. We are hoping to change this when we will move into our new house in May!
-Daniel
http://www.youngandfrugal.com
About 3 years ago, I went out and bought a 99 Saturn SC because of the price of gas. I figured out that if gas stayed at $3/gallon, I would save enough in 2 years to pay off the $3000 price tag of the car. The other thing I saved on was insurance. I moved my 6cyl Camry to ‘leisure’ status and only drive it on weekends. Other details are the Saturn has liability only insurance and I drive 120 miles a day for work.
Linda – you might want to do the math on buying a beater that gets good gas mileage v. driving your current vehicle.
Great advice. Since I moved to the city, I sold my car and take the subway or walk wherever I have to go.
i live in nyc- so i take the train. woohoo. $78 for unlimited monthly train and bus pass. woohoo!