Budgeting for Fuel

Ok I had tentatively entitled this 'budgeting for gas' but it just made me giggle so I'll be more grown up in my titling :-)

In my newly fledged budget I have allotted $280 for fuel for the month. Actually I've been using this amount for about a year and most of the time it appears to work. This is only for my vehicle fuel, not the husband's which comes out of his own account.

With gas prices at about $5 a gallon ($1.39 L here in Canada) a basic day costs me about $3 for fuel. That is if I only go to work and then come home. Any errands or extra trips taking and picking up kids from activities can double or triple this. Using this theory, a base level week would cost me a minimum of $15 assuming no extra trips during the week and no driving during the weekend. The reality is I do about 15 trips a week around and about which puts me at $45/week or $180 per month.

This amount goes higher when we have out of town trips, which come up a few times a month. It also will go higher when winter comes and the van needs to be running for at least 10 minutes to make that engine less objective to the 30 or 40 below zero temps.

The $280 amount hasn't ever gone over unless we have a lot of weekend hockey/soccer trips away or a big long drive away. Anything leftover from that budget line I usually tuck away and it can go towards paying my package policy on vehicle insurance, which is about $300 per year due in March, going towards regular license insurance, which is $800 per year, or saving it for those rarer occasions where there is a long trip away.

Usually I tuck the $280 aside in my savings, paying for my fuel with Mastercard (for the airmiles) and then paying it off at the end of the month.

As I currently have a balance on my MC, I am paying cash this month as I do not want to add more to the balance and have to pay interest.

It has been most interesting reading the fuel budget line on other blogs to see the differences people allot. I feel for those commuting longer distances from home to work and the extra costs they incur just to get where they are going to earn the money to live. I don't know how they do it.