Stop complaining about Gas Prices!
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I am a believer that if you have no control over something, it is pointless to stress about it. As a result, unless you are some oil executive or have ties to the Saudi royal family, there is NOTHING you can do to change gas prices. Yes, there are some ways that you can limit the amount of gas you use (see here and these tips should be followed. However, once you have followed that advice, you are helpless to further effect gas prices.
How much money are we really talking about here? Let’s say that an average person drives his/her car 12,000 miles per year and has a very modest 25 miles per gallon performance. For this example, we will also assume that the price of gas has gone up $1 per gallon. How much more money per year will this person have to spend on gas–$480. Now I am not downplaying the effect of $480 on anyone’s budget. Who couldn’t use an extra $480/year? In addition, I will concede that increased gas prices can cause almost everything else you buy to go up in price since gas in its production or transport. Still, I believe the amount of focus on the increasing gas prices is way overblown.
Instead, I propose that you focus you energy on other ways to make money or save money. This blog is littered with ways to make money, so I will leave that subject alone. Consider the following ways to save some extra cash:
1. Make a call to your cable company. Have you taken advantage of their bundled services yet (cable, internet, and phone service)? I will save over $720 this year just because I did this via Comcast. Did you know you can also negotiate with your cable company? Call them and start talking about cancelling HBO or another premimum channel and see if they will offer you a better deal. You might have to commit for another year or two, but you will save some money.
2. Look at your cell phone bill. Are you spending extra money for text messages? All cell phone companies offer packages for text messages that can save you money if you are frequent texter. Do you use your cell phone for most of your long distance calls? Are you still subscribed to a long distance carrier on your land line? If so, get rid of it. I recently ditched AT&T and save myself about $30/month for a service I rarely used. For emergencies, I signed up with Pioneer Telephone, a company that has no monthy fees and only charges you for calls you make.
3. Buy a nice thermos. FIll it with coffee at home (you can even buy some premium, gormeut stuff). Drive by Dunkin Donunt’s and Starbucks and laugh at those people wasting their gas by going out of their way or just starting the car an extra time. Packing your lunch will give you the same results.
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Filed under: Being Cheap, Economy, Saving Money, The Recession
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But on an individual level, higher gas prices are painful. As a college student, gas to get to campus is 35% of my expenses right now, and that’s with me trying my best to drive as little as possible!
In the end, I have to be willing to make adjustments: taking more online classes, bunching my other classes together on two or three days of the week, and looking into getting an off-campus job.
Also, people have to know what changes WON’T save them money. For example, I could move back to campus and drive less, but that would only save me money if gas hits $15 a gallon before I graduate next year!
My main point is that since you can’t control the prices, concentrate on something that you can control.
And I took care of the coffee situation years ago by switching to the cheaper coffee at work; and in more recent times to brewing at home.
But the overall point is good. Sometimes you just have to find something else to cut back on.
I am a believer that if you have no control over something, it is pointless to stress about it. As a result, unless you are some oil executive or have ties to the Saudi royal family, there is NOTHING you can do to change gas prices….
Seriously, you have a lot of good points.
Complaining about something for the sake of complaining is a waste of time.
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Well, cashcrateworks , I can understand why you say we shouldn’t complain but then again, the fact that we drive more (and don’t have a choice about that in most cases) means that any increase in price does affect us more. It’s still not a huge part of my budget but there’s no doubt that you feel it when the price increases by 50% or more in a short period- and for some people, there isn’t enough expendable income to cover the increase.
In other words, the volume that we consume is the problem and that makes us more sensitive to price fluctuations. So then you probably think, “consume less”, but you really have to visit the US to see why that generally isn’t very possible. Most of us live in suburbs that are miles from our workplace simply because there isn’t affordable housing close in to the urban centers. And even shopping and schools aren’t constructed in a way that makes them accessible without cars in most cases. The infrastructure would have to change, drastically, before any of us could significantly cut back on fuel consumption.