What Do YOU Spend on Gasoline?

Giving the current housing situation, I am always looking at loan articles and financial articles, in the everlasting pursuit of the “American Dream”.

I came across an interesting article today at the MagicLoans Secured Loans site. The article, entitled “Over half ’spend more than £30 a week on fuel‘”, discusses just how much people (in this case, the English) spend on petrol. So I was curious and did some figuring.

On a currency conversion site, I discovered that £30 = approximately $60 ($59.54). Rob then figured what we spend on gas per month, which is approximately $500! ($125 per week, or £62.98) – More than twice what the article was discussing!

No wonder we struggle so much financially, despite the decent salary my husband makes!

There really is no way out either. The only reason we are being charged so much for gas is because we’ll pay it. We have no choice not to. With suburban sprawl, how many of us really have the ability to walk to the grocery store or to our places of employment anymore? When we lived in St. Petersburg, Rob was able to ride his bicycle to work, saving us literally thousands of dollars over the duration of the lease. I mean think about it – we spend more than $6000 a year on gasoline now! A third of that is just for use in getting Rob back and forth to work (and doesn’t include the cost of tolls). And that estimate of $6000 per year accounts only for the cost of commute, the gas to my chiropractor appointments, and the gas to take children to play practice twice a week. It doesn’t include those trips to Target or Save-a-Lot, and it doesn’t include the cost of gas for recreational pursuits or reenacting.

We would really like to be able to purchase a home, but living in St. Petersburg, where we would NOT spend as much on gasoline, is not an option because real-estate there is nearly double what it is here in the ‘burbs.

Rob tried to remedy the no-money-for-food-because-gas-is-so-expensive problem by driving a motorcycle to and from work. It nearly cost him his life last December when a woman in an SUV cut him off on a busy highway.

So what are we to do?

How is the high price of gasoline affecting your family?