Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Our gasoline expenses are actually down from last year

Curious to see what the rising gasoline prices are doing to our finances, I ran a comparison this morning of our gas expenditures so far this year, matched with the same period last year.
Despite an 18 percent price increase, we paid $61.94 less to operate our vehicles between Jan. 1 and April 20 than during the same period last year.
The totals were $1,129.45 last year and $1,067.51 in 2008.
There are a couple of reasons:
1. We moved from Indiana to Arkansas and gas prices run about 10 cents/gallon less here than in Indiana.
2. We're driving fewer miles. Maria's daily round-trip commute here is 17 miles, less than half what it was in Indiana. When we lived in Indiana, we routinely drove 60-80 miles round-trip to shop in Lafayette or Indianapolis. Now, a shopping trip involves only 17-20 miles of driving.
I'm confident that gas prices will continue to rise and will soon erase that margin of saving, but it was nice to be ahead of the game for awhile.

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