Gasoline Woes!

I just read an article on cnn.com predicting gasoline prices of $4 a gallon this summer. It took me back to the days when I first arrived in Georgia 10 years ago. Gas was under a $ and no one gave a damn about what they drove or how much they drove. I drove a corolla then but it was mainly because I’m not into SUVs or big cars. Gas expenses never crossed my mind then. 10 years later gas prices have tripled, traffic has worsened , commute has increased and the pay hasn’t kept up. But me and others around me still don’t think twice about driving 40 miles to a sale in order to (seemingly) save a few bucks. I guess old habits die hard!

Someday when I need a new car I’ll buy a Prius but I keep telling myself that until then I need to take some small steps to help my bottom line(the financial one). With that in mind, I thought about car-pooling. I even signed up for a car-pool service but soon realized that it wasn’t for me. I’m too used to coming in and leaving whenever I like. I could’nt possibly be dependent on someone else’s schedule. So I told myself that I could at least save a couple of bucks every time by filling gas at Costco since I shop there anyway. Somehow I always end up at Costco with a full tank. My car always happens to scream ‘I need gas’ when I am in the vicinity of the most expensive gas station. May be its all the BPs and Exxons conspiring against me!

I know people who keep track of where the cheapest gas is being sold and drive to those places to fill up. Whether it makes sense to spend some gas in order to save a $ or so, I know not. But I do know that there is no harm in driving to a neighbouring gas station if you realize that it has cheaper gas than the one that you are at. A colleague of mine did just that one time. She was driving home from work one day and realized that she was out of gas. She saw a gas station and pulled into it. She was about to fill up her tank, when the sign at the gas station across the street caught her attention. They were selling gas few cents cheaper. Since my colleague is a thrifty person, she decided to drive across the street in order to save some money. She got into her car, crossed the street and was at the entrance of the other gas station when her car stalled. She was only a few feet away from the pump. A man standing at the pump felt sorry for this poor girl and remarked “You almost made it” . She smiled and thought to herself “If you only knew!”.