Fuel prices crimping plans
Posted on May 22nd, 2008 – 3:57 PMBy Kara McGuire
I’ve become accustomed to flying a couple of times per year (at least) to visit family or go on vacation.
This year, we flew to LA for a wedding and Mexico on vacation, both for well under $500 per person. And I remember after college grabbing tickets to San Francisco for $150 round trip. For Labor Day 2006 our family of four flew to Chicago for about $300 (the little guy didn’t pay for a seat, though).
But I worry that cross-country leisure travel for people with average-sized pocketbooks could be a thing of the past.
My price threshold for buying a domestic plane ticket is set at a somewhat random $350 per seat. That means no trip to see my cousin get married outside Harrisburg, PA (seats are around $470) or to see a family friend marry in Connecticut (seats were a whopping $509 to fly into Hartford). At those prices– and with airlines charging for bags, food, you name it– we’ll be grounded for some time.
Auto travel is no better with gas prices approaching $4.00. The AAA predicts that the number of Americans driving more than 50 miles away from home over the long weekend will decline by about 1 percent, a small number, but a big sign because it rarely declines.
We’re a contributor to that decline. We were planning to go to Kansas City to see a two-day kids music festival where They Might Be Giants and Justin Roberts are playing– two bands my kids as well as my husband and I really enjoy. There’s an elephant at their zoo too. But we decided loading up the car would be tiring and expensive. We’ll be digging up tree roots in our yard instead.
Day-to-day,I am driving shorter distances when I can. I haven’t set foot in my beloved Costco for months now because driving from St. Paul to St. Louis Park for cheap milk just doesn’t feel like a bargain (although I’ve yet to run the numbers). I’m also trying to bike to work more.
How about you? Have you made any changes– big or small– to cope with higher fuel prices? Skipped trips? Traded in the SUV for a Hybrid?
14 Responses to "Fuel prices crimping plans"
Not that it’s good advice for those in MN but I just bought a truck that runs on compressed natural gas which out here in Utah I can fill up for 0.63 per gas gallon equivalent.
$4.00 gas prices don’t really bother me all that much to be honest.
With fuel prices around $9-10 per gallon in europe for my colleagues, I cannot complain about $4 gas and expect it to go higher. Perhaps then people will re-think their decisions. (mega-commutes to their McMansions with mega heating bills?) No big changes in air travel. Or car travel: we plan on going to Duluth this summer and gas will be the lowest cost item of the trip relative to hotel, food, etc. In terms of vehicles, our fuel costs (variable) are lower than our fixed costs (mtnce/depreciation) so no changes in plans. I just checked and our rolling average fuel spend for the past 4 months is unchanged - meaning that we have changed our behavior slightly (smarter planning) as prices rose. 2 SUV’s that get 17 mpg…but we choose to live close to work and the things we like to do. For most people, a used economy car would make more economic sense than a hybrid.
OK so our fuel prices more than doubled the last few years and in Europe they have been
paying 9-10 dollars a gallon for some time. Does anyone know if their prices have doubled
like ours the last couple years, I don’t think so. Next point, in Europe they collect their tax
dollars with fuel taxes, here we collect our tax dollars from property taxes, income taxes
and sales taxes and what not, now who are we fooling? ourselves or the good fairy.
Slate.com had a great article in the last week about how $4 a gallon is still cheap, for reasons too many for me to list. We’re just trying to be smart about combining trips and walking and biking more. It doesn’t bug us too much since I take the bus to work and my wife stays at home.
For air travel, we’ve been extremely lucky. We used our frequent flyer miles for our recent trip to Jamaica and the day we got back we found tickets to Boston for $299 each. That would have seemed a bit high for me 5 years ago, but now it seems like a bargain.
I’m only waiting for the other shoe to drop, though. One of these days I’m going to have to go out east for a wedding or a funeral and be staring at a $600 ticket…or more.
Luckily I can drop my husband off at work on my way to work, so our daily commute isn’t too bad. I’m trying to avoid running to the store, etc. unless I can go to more than one place at a time to save gas. Other than that, we’re just moving money around in the budget to cover the increased cost of gas. On the vacation front, we’ve been talking about going to Europe for a while now, but with the cost of airplane tickets on the rise coupled with the tanking dollar, we’re putting that plan on hold indefinitely. I think we’lll stick pretty close to home at least for the next year or so.
I definitely think twice about taking the car out for anything now. If I run out of just juice or eggs, I wait until I run out of a lot more groceries before I run to the store. A lot of people at work drive elsewhere to get lunch — I just bring mine and sit in the break room. The high prices hasn’t changed my life drastically (besides me whining a little more) but I do try to be a little wiser about when I drive.
I moved. I had been planning a move for a while to shorten my commute, but as gas prices increased quickly, the areas in which I had been looking became much more focused around where I work. Now, I live less than 3 miles from my office. I traded some in the neighborhood market for location, but so far it hasn’t been too much of a problem.
I can’t afford to visit my three wondeful nieces in Kansas as often now. Thanks a lot big oil!
Air fares (discounted) these days are about the most expensive I have seen in years, perhaps ever. We are headed for the Pacific Northwest this summer, and bought our tickets five months ahead of our trip. The exact same itinerary has gone up $150 since we bought our tickets, and our weren’t necessarily a bargain even then, either. For the three of us, it would have cost another $450 gaif we had waited until now to buy the tickets, and that might have materially changed our plans. We did not get hit with it, but we can see that this was a close call.
About the gas prices, our Honda gets on the average 32 MPG driving around the Metro area, and we still feel the sting. We wonder how other people are managing this, esp. whenever we get passed by these huge SUVs (which are often accelerating all the way to the red light and slamming brakes - thanks a lot for increasing the gas consumption).
In our daily lives we are certainly combining trips and using the most fuel efficient of our two vehicles. I take the bus to work and my wife’s commute is only 5 miles so we don’t see much difference there. We do have a lake home and have planned fewer trips and longer stays to save on travel costs.
Regarding airline travel - we are going to Europe this fall and the fall prices I am seeing are the equivalent of the summer high season prices we have seen in the past. We will rent a car in France for a week so that will be pricy too. We have rented vehicles in Europe in the past and are very aware of the bargin price we pay here in the US, even today.
jacksan brings up a good point. Aggressive driving burns up a ton of fuel, and you end up saving zero time, especially on short trips. Give yourself enough time to get there, don’t be in such a rush to “get ahead of the line”, save some fuel, save some money, and live longer. Please!
(Of course, I’m probably preaching to the choir here…are those drivers reading this?)
I only drive 6-8k miles a year and get over 25 MPG so that’s 320 gal gas a year on the high side. So every $1 gal rise in price is only $25/mo so it’s hard to get too excited about that.
As for airfare I’ve used airline frequent flyer or credit card points for most of my family’s travel the past 5 years so haven’t really been impacted there.
Alt writes
“OK so our fuel prices more than doubled the last few years and in Europe they have been paying 9-10 dollars a gallon for some time. Does anyone know if their prices have doubled like ours the last couple years, I don’t think so.”
I heard on the radio this AM that truckers in the UK are protesting a 50% rise in diesel costs over the last year. I believe that is a lower increase than we’ve seen.
The perception of $10/gal gas in Europe is shocking - but you also have to account for an extremely weak US dollar. In their own currencies the prices have not risen as much.
We haven’t changed our habits too much, but we already have pretty minimal driving habits.
My sister bought a horse trailer so we could go horse camping, but it is going to cost a pretty penny hauling the horses. And not just the gas is expensive, we have to buy hay, which went up in price and wood for the campfires. Last year we spent about $20 a night in campfire wood alone.
I know we still plan on going a couple of times, maybe not drive as far.
