I've got gas :-)

My summer "let's drive to...." has been drastically cut this season. Before I head out anywhere I am constantly thinking of how much this will cost. In many ways I envy my children's friends who are a part of the 'we're driving to x lake' or 'we're heading out to the coast'. I feel bad for my kids because they don't get holidays like that but we can't even afford the gas to GET to such places, let alone stay there for a week or two. It really just doesn't seem fair sometimes.

Playing with my conversion chart, 1 US Gallon is 3.79 L. Currently our gas price here is $1.33 a L, which is down from $1.39 of about 10 days ago. That works out to $5.04/gallon. I'm not sure how that competes with any US readers out there and the price of their gas.

We live in a small twin community of a town and a small city. Total population of them both is about 25 000. Before school let out, I filled up my tank and did a loop..... from home over to drop the boys off at school, to my work, then picking them up and home again. That round trip cost $3, which isn't that bad, but often during the course of our day, we're doing similar trips over and back 2 or 3 times a day which means 14-21 of those a week. That comes to between $42 and $63 a week. That's warm weather driving. In the winter when the van needs to be warmed up in the AM and again after school before going somewhere, those costs are almost double.

I know there are people out there commuting to work and have a much higher gas bill than I.

I have budgeted $280 per month for gas. (I've actually been doing a gas budget for about a year). Anything not spent during these warmer months goes into a separate category saved aside for longer road trips or winter months. It's worked rather well except when you have several longer road trips recently which have eaten up the 'extra'.

It's made me think a lot about how much I drive, how much my car idles (say in Drive Thru), how to combine and preplan errands to cut down on the number of trips I make. That part has been a good thing. Paying the extra money per litre sure hasn't.