$368 a month on gas = 3 gallons a day!

The BBQ Pit
101

Well, I think you might be exaggerating as much as the OP. Or, at least, the situation you describe isn’t inevitable.

In my case, I live seven miles from my workplace (downtown L.A.). I’ve always chosen places to live that make for easy public transit to work (or the university). I’m not forced to live in a “shitty apartment” or “in the bad part of downtown,” either–unless “bad” for you is code meaning “not all white people,” as it often is with some people. In fact, we share a comfortable, large, three-bedroom craftsman with hardwood floors, a fire place, a modest back yard, and two baths. (We moved out of the dingbat, but it’s in the same neighborhood). The rent we pay is comparable–maybe even better—than that of bedroom communities.

I can walk to the subway, and I take that to work about twice a week. Not really to save gas so much as it’s just easier if I don’t have a bunch of stuff to carry. I’d say if I wanted, I could easily get by on three gallons a day most days, unless I have to go to the Westside a lot.

I realize this kind of situation is not possible for many people, but I don’t think living closer to work is always as impossible as people claim. A lot of people just refuse to live in a place that doesn’t have certain characteristics. Or, they’re already driving a lot, so they don’t think twice about taking a job 30 miles away. (I’ve turned down jobs because of the commute.) If working people abandon the areas around their jobs just for the extra sq. feet, or a pool–or “better” neighbors–that causes an economic ripple locally.

And another major reason why so many people have to live so far from work is that so many employers just assume that everyone is okay with driving a lot to get to work–so they put their companies out in the middle of nowhere, because the rents are cheaper. “Business parks” in soulless suburban wastelands are one of the leading causes of degradation of the quality of life, IMHO. (Meanwhile, a lot of urban commercial real estate lies empty.) The company saves the rent, the employees pay for the gas.

I know many people have no choice, but I think people have more choice they they say.

102

Drive a 1997 four-door Ford Contour that gets exeptional gas mileage - averaging between 32 and 35 miles per gallon.

I drive twice a week to a town that’s 35 miles away, to help out my son-in-law at an auto shop that he bought 7 years ago. I also drive almost a hundred miles (one way) to a vacation home. Do that twice a month. Plus the miscellaneous things like to the library, hardware store, etc.

My gas consumption records are complete and accurate, and show that in the last 721 days my gasoline consumption is 0.96 gallons per day. I have no intention of changing my driving habits in the slightest.

BTW, heard on one of the local news broadcasts this morning that the “experts” are predicting that the price of gas will be down to around $3.50 by this summer. Betcha that makes all the America haters on this board almost sick.

103

I had to look this up.

I now see your point. Who wouldn’t want to live in or near the residential equivalent of a strip mall, something referred to as “cheap urban apartment buildings from the 1950s & 60s”, and “reviled as socially alienating visual blights”?

I can’t imagine why anyone would prefer a spacious house with a pool in the suburbs. :rolleyes:

Now, I’m sure yours was a very nice dingbat, so don’t take it personally. But my point is that anyone complaining about Americans’ gas usage is really just complaining that some people have other priorities in life besides spending as little money on transportation as possible.

104

You seem to be neglecting the part where the 3 gallon average also means a lot of assholes are also using a lot less.

Do you have a car? You’re one of the Evils!

I haven’t owned a car in 11 years. So Nyah. I purposefully moved to the city and found work within 3-4 miles from home. Sometimes I walk all the way there. Most of the time I take the CTA. And I have a big bootie. The 4 or 5 times I need a car in a year, I use iGo.

It’s just my small part in offsetting the gas guzzlers of the world. Of which I bet you are one.

Other people in the thread who use gas daily, I’m sure it’s in the forefront of your mind most of the time, at least every time you have to go buy gas. Is it your choice? Of course, but it’s a choice that is necessary and is part of a zillion other choices of which a change is not simple by any means.

We’ll get there eventually, but certainly not tomorrow, and probably not in our lifetimes.

105

I don’t think that even the OP is complaining about Americans’ gas usage. He’s complaining that a lot of Americans have arranged their lives so that they use a lot of gas and then complain about the high cost of their transportation budget. In other words, he’s saying that if you organize your life so that you travel 60 miles a day to work and back, and if you choose to let your kids participate in events where you have to drive them 20 miles each day, you shouldn’t then complain that you have to spend a lot of money on gas.

106

Here’s my family’s situation:

We moved here ten years ago to Connecticut, which has a very high cost of living. The houses in the town where I got my first job cost twice as much as the houses one town over (about 20 miles away), so that’s where we bought our house. (You can buy a lot of gas for $100,000, which was the difference in home prices between the two towns.) We then put down roots, my son made friends, etc. When I was a child, we moved constantly, and I didn’t want my son to go through the same thing, so we stayed put, even when my office moved 10 miles farther away. At the same time, my wife’s office also moved out of the downtown area and into a suburb about 10 miles farther away from our house–so we both had 30 mile commutes each way, in completely different suburbs.

So then I got a job myself in the downtown area, and inspired by the spike in gas prices at the time and the lack of parking in the downtown area, I started car-pooling and taking the bus. I did this for three years until my company decided to recently move me to a different location where there is no bus service (unless I want to transfer three times, and walk two miles), and where neither of my former car-poolers work. :rolleyes: The kicker was when I was told that I should appreciate the transfer because the new place had plenty of parking. :rolleyes:

I can’t tell you how much I miss riding the bus. I was getting into the habit of reading again, and saving lots of money and wear on my car.

As for my wife, her office has been promising that they will be able to telecommute sometime “soon” for several years now, but they never seem to get around to actually implementing it.

107

We live in a condo in a semi-marginal urban neighborhood instead of in a much bigger house with a yard and garage, etc. in the suburbs purely because it meant we could both be a 5-minute walk from a train line that takes us both within walking distance of our workplaces. We have a single, 13-year-old compact car that has a whopping 66,000 miles on it (and for roughly a 3-year chunk of those 13 years, I was without the use of one leg, so I hope y’all will cut me some slack for driving to work during that period). We fill the 12-gallon tank roughly once a month. The car is used almost exclusively for weekend errands.

Yes, part of this is helped by the fact that my industry is almost all located downtown near public transportation, but we have also foregone having a much nicer and larger living space in large part to avoid having to drive everywhere or own two cars. The not having to spend 10+ hours each per week stuck in traffic is just a bonus. I’d much rather spend it zoning out on the El with my iPod. And I simply can’t fathom spending several hundred dollars a month on gas.

108

I’m conflicted here. I think the OP is a smug ass who probably is borderline trolling. On the other hand, it pisses me off that after the last spike in gas prices, people went right on back to their Expeditions and Denalis. People didn’t seem to learn much, based on the size of the cars I’m seeing in the parking lot at work.

For the record, I moved to my current house because it was five miles from where I was working. It was even bike-able in good weather. Then the company relocated ten miles further away. So I burn a gallon a day and telecommute when I can.

But…if I want to visit any family, it’s a 300 mile round trip. Best friends? 240 mile round trip. Nearest decent mountain for hiking/skiing? 220 miles round trip.

OK, I don’t visit or do those activities every weekend, or even every month. But when I do, it adds up. I’m glad our virtuous OP lives in a tiny village with his family, work and friends nearby and has no hobbies that involve doing more than dragging his bag of Cheetos to his computer. But that’s not everyone.

109

Gas in my neck of the woods is approximately $8 a gallon.

110

Hmmm… I am married and have 4 children. We have only one car in our household. On an average day the kids walk or bike to school, my husband bikes to work and I use the car mainly for errands/ extracurricular activities. I’m pretty sure we use less than a gallon a day.

But we live very central in a city, close to schools, the university where my husband works, etc. Not everyone has same advantages, so I’m just happy we bought this house where we did.

But on the other hand tomorrow we are driving up into the mountains for the weekend, and that’s a lot more than 3 gallons of gas!

111

Exactly. I keep seeing these people being interviewed at “man on the street” segments, at the gas pump, dropping nearly $50 to fill up their tanks, saying how horrible it is, how it’s causing all manner of financial hardship, how they’re cutting back on other things, but then and shrugging and saying “what can you do?”

You can learn to consolidate trips, so that you drive less. You can start prioritizing activities. You can carpool. The price of gas continues to climb, yet rush hour traffic is just as bad as it’s ever been, and the number of cars on the road with no occupants other than the driver is just as high as ever.

In the late 70s/early 80s, in the first “gas crisis” I went to a private school across the street from where my mother worked, and I recall well the carpool we were a part of, with 3 other women who worked in the same building as my mom. Each driver drove every day for a week.

Did it mean leaving a bit earlier than we otherwise would have? Yes. Did it mean getting home slightly later? Yes. By about ten minutes, morning and evening. Did it mean having to make a plan in case of emergency or sickness? Yes.

But it also meant that each participant used literally 1/4 of the gas on their commute that they would’ve otherwise. Twenty minutes a day and a contingency plan were more than worthwhile to eliminate 3/4 of communuting costs. And that was before the cost of gas hit $1 per gallon.

But here we are at $4 a gallon and no one is talking about ridesharing today. The public service announcements I used to see for vanpooling, even through the prosperous 90s, have disappeared.

We’re a nation of control freaks, apparently, because we cannot bear to not be in our own vehicles, even when it makes no financial sense for us to be.

Which, you know, fine, if you can’t bear to commute with your neighbor who pulls out of his driveway at the same time as you every single morning and drives to the same part of the city as you and drives home at the same time every evening because… becuase you just can’t, or whatever, great for you.

But then stop complaining about what your commute costs you. You made your choice. (And especially clam up if you’re driving an SUV. You knew what the mileage was when you bought it.)

I found out yesterday that my dentist, who has a 30 mile round trip daily commute, just bought a Hummer. In the last month, I mean, he went ought and bought a freaking Hummer. And a procedure that was $65 all inclusive two years ago now costs $150. Suffice it to say that I’m looking for a new dentist.

112

I’m retired and probably put maybe 10 mile per week max on my car. My car is a Hyundai Elantra that gets an average of 24MPG in city driving. Why the hell aren’t I getting rich? Seriously, when I was delivering drugs I often put 150 miles per day on my car. I would have had to give up my job; there simply wasn’t enough cash flow to sustain it.

I feel for people who have no choice as to the amount of miles they must drive in a day.

113

I’m just curious, bup, what is your gas consumption situation? You have indicated you are an American and, yet, have been so very silent on where and how you manage to make your situation work out so much better than the ‘average’ American that you can be so very judgmental about every other American.

And, yet, I tend to agree with you, somewhat. I’m in the Phoenix metro area and I know far, far too many people that are driving in to downtown Phoenix from Avondale, Goodyear, East Mesa, Queen Creek etc. (30+ miles one way easy) because they HAD to have that 2500 square foot, brand new house with the pool for themselves and their kid(s). I see newly graduated kids doing this and it just infuriates me because Phoenix is another one of those huge cities that sprawl and there is literally no public transportation.

Many Americans today want everything, no, they EXPECT everything RIGHT NOW. When my parents moved here and bought a house in Scottsdale in the 60’s they had no furniture. No drapes. They weren’t concerned about granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances in their first house. They were willing to save and wait until they could afford these things.

But this is a new age we live in today, that’s for sure.

I’ve strayed from why I posted…Still wanna know, bup, give it up, what is your situation? Hmmmmm???

114

How much of that is tax?

115

message deleted. don’t want to tilt at this particular windmill.

116

I walk to work. So there.

(Of ocurse, I work at one of the largest CO2 emitters in the world - can’t win 'em all)

117

This is a subject where it is really really easy to judge and be a horrible meano.

As has been mentioned, there is an element of choice in this. We do have Entitlement Syndrome here…or at least an overflated sense of what is reasonable. I brushed on this with my mother the other day. We were talking about food consumption. She’s been on a diet and has lost an impressive amount of weight. She said she couldn’t wait till she could be back up to 1800 to 2000 calories/day. My response was, “To do what? Gain weight again?” I recommended to her to at least try to stay around 1500 calories and she should be able to maintain what she’s lost. You woulda thought I had recommended she starve to death. “But I want to be able to go out to EAT!” she whined. THEN STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW FAT YOU ARE AND HOW MUCH YOUR KNEES HURT! I wanted to yell at her (but of course did not). People want it both ways. They want to the luxuries of a comfortable life without having to pay for it. That includes higher taxes, too.

But the gas thing is society’s fault ultimately. Yes, individuals can make choices that mitigate the expense but for most people, you get to the point where you would have to upturn everything just to save a few bucks and it becomes unreasonable.

I walk to work everyday. It’s a 7 mile round trip commute. I can do it because I’m relatively young and mobile. Also, if I don’t feel like walking I can just hop on the bus and it drops me off in very comfortable walking distance to both work and home. I only drive my beater once or twice a week, and usually only when I’m too lazy to walk the mile to the grocery store or whatnot. When picking out a location to live, proximity to work and a grocery store were major criteria, even above safety. I didn’t even care about how nice the apartment was (I put down the deposit sight unseen because I was doing it remotely).

However, I am single. I have no spouse to consider. Maybe my location works fine for my job, but his field of work would require a longer, non-walkable commute. If I had kids, maybe I would care more about the quality of school in my neighborhood, which would expand my commuting distance so that perhaps I couldn’t take the bus or walk. And housing is expensive enough for just a two bedroom in my neighborhood. It rises exponentially once you start expanding the square footage. I guess my point is that we do have choices, but we don’t have ALL the choices out there. Even if everyone was in tip-top physical shape and loved living in urban areas, there would still be a lot of people who would have to live far from where they work, who would have to drive. Not all jobs are located in business districts or downtown areas. Some of them are located out in that dreaded “sprawl” area, where the expansion of public transit is often blocked by the very people who could benefit from it (because it’s a portal for criminals, don’tcha know).

So I try to save my tongue-clicking for people who are blatant in their overconsumption and actually complain. If someone is paying $400 in gas every month and they accept that this is just price they have to pay for making the choices they’ve made, then they really aren’t any different than people who buy mink coats or fancy handbags. I feel more sorry for people who, through limited income, don’t have the ability to make many choices. Right now, a lot of people fall in that last group.

118

Just FYI, most people will lose weight on a 1500 calorie a day average, accurately counted (1500 calories guesstimate, for most days, except the days they eat more, maybe not). Very few people will gain at 1800.

But I do agree with your larger point. I am quite capable of being sympathetic to people bitching about rising prices in moderation, but when they act as if they have no choices and are a total victim of circumstance, it can be frustrating.

I am pregnant, and we are planning on having my husband quit his job when the baby gets here. Several people at work have said “Man, I’d love to do that, if we could afford it”. But they make exactly what I make. It’s not a lucky break that makes it so I can afford it, it’s careful, careful planning and years of saving and not getting into any financial binds or getting used to a standard of living we couldn’t sustain on just my income. They don’t mean it that way, but it’s hard not to take it as dismissing all that when they say “I wish I could do that. Lucky for you!”

In the same way, we have only one car, so our transportation costs are low. People say “I wish I could do that”, but it’s not clear what they mean by that. We can do that because we made choices/accepted inconveniences in order to do that. It didn’t just happen. Wishing has nothing to do with it.

But, again, I’ve certainly bitched about things I wasn’t willing to change, and I am willing to be sympathetic when others do it. But there is a question of degree, and a line that can be crossed, at which point I become more annoyed than sympathetic.

119

Lucky bastard.

With current exchange rates and fuel prices we’re at 9.40 USD/gallon

(1.74 EUR/liter)

Somehow we seem to manage with quite a lot less than 3 gallons per day.

120

They could very well be wishing they had made the choices you did. They may not actually be able to afford what you are doing now that they’ve made the wrong choices.

That said, having never had a family income greater than $35,000 for four people, it still bugs me when other people complain about not having enough money, and then talk about their fancy vacation they are going on for a week, or their brand new car/iPhone/etc.

Semi-related story: My sister actually quit her $10+ an hour job for an $8.50 one and is making more money, because the other job required her to drive at least 100 miles a day–not in going to work, but going various places during the day. And she had to be replaced by two different people. How can you carpool for a job like that?