Cheap(ish) Gas

I just did some quick figuring.  If you drive 10,000 miles a year and get 20mpg, you'll need to buy 500 gallons in a year.  At $4 a gallon, that's $2,000 a year.  If you drive more and/or get worse mileage, you'll pay more.  If you drive less and/or get better mileage, you'll pay less.  Also, there's no way to know if gas prices will keep going up, level off, or drop a bit.  But, no matter how you look at it, there are some pretty serious dollars going into your gas tank.

It's probably not worth it to try to buy a new car to save on gas costs (your car payments will far outweigh your gas savings), UNLESS you were planning to buy a new car soon, anyway.  If you were, you can see that there's a substantial financial incentive to look into something that gets good mileage.

Well, I drove down to Peck and the Pomona Freeway this evening.  It was a little bit out of my way but I wanted to see if the tales of bargain gasoline were still true. :D

Tonight, both the Mobil and the Shell station had gas at $3.79., which is about 15 to 18 cents cheaper than the stations nearer my house.  On the downside, were are a lot of small flying bugs there that were annoying.  And the cars are still lining up for gas, so  you may need to wait a while.  But I put in twelve gallons, which means I saved a bit over $2.  That means, based on gasoline costs, I saved more than I burned.  This assumes I value my time at zero.  And, let's face it, at the time I went for the gas, I wasn't doing anything important, so I'm willing to say my time value for the trip to El Monte was zero.