Thread: How are gas prices affecting you???

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I drive about 30 miles round trip to work but I'm on 12 hr days so I only work half of any given month and the Dakota gets around 14/15 mpg. I'll be driving to Topeka on the June 1st for the drags and that's about 450 miles round trip so I'll drive the Concorde and it gets between 28/30 on the highway if I keep my foot out of it. Right now gas is $3.50 here but I expect to go up before the 1st.
I'm with Bob on this one. If our so called representatives in Congress would get off their duffs and ignore the green-weenies and tree huggers and reign in the EPA we just might get some new refineries built. That and drill in Alaska.

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i cant even afford to drive to work, figure bring home around 200-240 a week x that by 80-100 a week for gas this is BS

My wife works part time 20 hrs. a week it takes just over 2 gallons of gas just to get to work and back. Gas is $3.97 so at that rate driving a Plymouth neon it takes 4 hours out of her 20 hours to pay for gas, that leaves her 16 for taxes, and everything else that we pay. I charged our credit card for 3/4 of the propane it will take to get us through this coming winter. I got a good price so you do what ever you have to do to get by. My pension goes for our health insurance with less then $100 left over. On paper we cannot do the math we would be in the red but somehow we get to the next month. If it wasn’t for plastic we would
Really have a hard time. Bottom line it is very important to have good credit.

Like Denny, we also like soup. I wish Denny would chime back in.

Richard

Well,since I retired two years ago,I've only driven my car three times. I do however use the girlfriend's car,her weekly cost has doubled. What is a major concern to me is heating oil. Even with a new high effiency boiler,this place sucks up a little over 100 gallons a month. I'd love to hear about alternative fuels for heating oil. Hank

Drinking less whiskey these days!!! Seriously, since I work from home, I'm not affected that horribly by the gas prices. What is really hurting me is the costs of heating my house. I heat with electric heat (electric furnace), and when I did my income tax about 2 months ago, I see that my energy costs have increased by 40% over the year previous. That means that when averaged out over 12 months, my electricity bill for a 3 bedroom bungalow is $450 a month. I inquired about natural gas, and was told that there is so little difference now between the cost of electric heat and natural gas, that it would take 12 years to regain the costs of putting in a gas furnace.

Originally Posted by NTFDAY

I drive about 30 miles round trip to work but I'm on 12 hr days so I only work half of any given month and the Dakota gets around 14/15 mpg. I'll be driving to Topeka on the June 1st for the drags and that's about 450 miles round trip so I'll drive the Concorde and it gets between 28/30 on the highway if I keep my foot out of it. Right now gas is $3.50 here but I expect to go up before the 1st.
I'm with Bob on this one. If our so called representatives in Congress would get off their duffs and ignore the green-weenies and tree huggers and reign in the EPA we just might get some new refineries built. That and drill in Alaska.

If you want even more MPG out of the Concorde, get the Alloy Wheels from a '96-'00 Dodge Intrepid. there the same size and everything but there a little lighter. my moms MPG went up 2 MPG when we put them on her '02 Concorde.

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Drinking less whiskey these days!!! Seriously, since I work from home, I'm not affected that horribly by the gas prices. What is really hurting me is the costs of heating my house. I heat with electric heat (electric furnace), and when I did my income tax about 2 months ago, I see that my energy costs have increased by 40% over the year previous. That means that when averaged out over 12 months, my electricity bill for a 3 bedroom bungalow is $450 a month. I inquired about natural gas, and was told that there is so little difference now between the cost of electric heat and natural gas, that it would take 12 years to regain the costs of putting in a gas furnace.

Things have change over the last 13 years that we have lived in our present house. We are on propane it started out at .79 per gallon. Last year the lock in price was $2.11 with a charge of $100 to get that price. We have two furnaces that run on propane and one electric furnace. It takes us 2000 gallons to get through the winter, and that is keeping the house at 58 degrees at night, and around 60 to 62 during the day when we are home and for me that is most of the time. Most people would say what the hell are you doing there? When I had to retire things were different but they can change real quick. The house needs a new roof plus more things to get it ready to sell so it’s a case of grin and bear it. In the beginning it was really high to run the electric one but now the cost in comparison is not bad. We have an electric hot water heater, plus electric oven, and stovetop. I see the wood burners that are in small buildings but they are expensive and the initial cost of the unit plus they smoke like crazy, and it would be like you switching over to gas. It would take many years to recover or just break even, and at my age it wouldn’t be worth it. I guess struggling in the country is better then watching the crime in the cities, so what are you going to do.

Richard

They hurt damn it, they hurt! But what are you going to do? Gotta have the joy juice to get to work and get to the store and to go to cruise ins. So I guess the only thing left to do is to pay the $3.96/gal and give up the beer, pizza, buffalo wings, and stop feeding the cats.

Praying for lower gas prices hasn't helped so far, so maybe I'll stop going to church too. I'm sure HE will understand.

Unless your walking to church you would be saving a little more fuel, I think the grace you would lose would out weigh the fuel savings imo.

Split the pizza and beer money, to feed the cats.

Richard

I've been tossing the idea of a solar power setup. We have a southern facing back yard with a large surface area on the barn/garage roof that is ideal for photovoltaic. A friend did a similar setup, where it just turns back his meter(no batteries) He pays about 1 dollar a month in the summer for all electrical stuff, his initial cost wasabout 25k(with tax rebates). In the summer they have air conditioning running all the time, because they live in the Sacramtento area. He also runs his lanscaping buisness out of two buildings on his property.
I figure if we got space heaters for the rooms, our gas bill would drop quite a bit in the winter. Also they are starting to come out with electric hiway commute cars. By plugging in a car to commute my 50 miles a day, I could save 2-300 in gas a month. Also save around 200 for the electric bill. It doesn't take long with our current prices to recover the initial investment, plus the ability not to rely on foreign oil would be great! I also like making the power company pay me when the meter spins backwards!

A guy in our area has a turbine windmill, he has had two for the time we have live here, which is now 13 years. The initial cost as $16.000 and his meter would send the power down the line, he would get paid for what he sent out. The power companies didn’t want to pay the public for their power generated so they now give a credit. I have thought about it but how long would it take to recover, and the guy has already put up a new one in the length of time we have been here. It’s a tough call; I think a young couple could do all right if they were staying in the same house like we did our last one that was 20 years.

Richard

We have been driving 22 miles each way 6 days a week--diesel about $ 100 and going up---tolal of 18 manhours per week for the 2 of us just driving to/from shop ( 45 min each way X 2people x 2 ways) so we are moving engine shop stuff back to home shop and selling our 10000ft shop ( heat, lites,taxes) luckily we have several people interested in buying

I feel for you guys, but how about this? My brother and I are farmers, it's costing us $500 a day to seed our crop, just for fuel.

Farmers and truckers. How do you make any money.

My family still owns half their original acrage in Fresno. They get paid not to pick the fruit these days. I think, instead of letting the grapes/raisons rot, they should pick them and give them to the starving, seems stupid fopr the government to pay for nothing! In 1930, the raisons sustained the farm, today, it's supplemental income to what ever fulltime job you have that pays the bills! I'm not l;ooking at the solar stuff in the short term, I'm thinking what is gas going to cast 5 years from now, and if I get my system now, I'll save on building it for twice as much in 5 years time!