Gas cost reduction

I’ve taken measures to adjust my lifestyle beginning October 2007 after my prediction of the coming depression. After discussing with a few other people I know, it is agreed that this one will have more impact than the hi tech collapse of 2001 as it involves several major events: Collapse of financial sector, war on two front, decreasing home value and extremely high gas price.

So, what did a mere mortal like me do to ensure that I get through this safe and sound? Why, by making sure that I am invaluable at my job and cost cutting in everyday expenses. I’ve taken a different attitude towards work now that it seems like jumping ship in the near future is close to impossible because companies have started cutting jobs, I might as well be content where I am. On the cost cutting front though, I tackled the only two factors that I can tackle. Food and energy cost.

I am still waiting for more data to confirm the other parts, but I’d like to talk about how I streamlined my driving habits to reduce gasoline spending by 37%. My 3 month stats saw a reduction in gas spending in the previous 3 months as follows: $145.41, $128.64 and $90.35. I applied different techniques in each month so I can register the differences they made and here are the results of each month’s implementation:

Gas price (~$20)

I used to wait for Thursday to take advantage of the 3 cents reduction in premium gas grade, but decided to scrap that strategy in favors of others. I tracked gas station prices and noticed that the price would usually shoot up before Thrusday making the 3 cent reduction pretty much meaningless. The movement of prices shows that the up swing happens in a day and slowly goes down over the next 7 days. Average variation is in the vicinity of 1 dollar. For example, the price tag will shoot up to $123.4 and slowly drifts back down to $113.4 before it shoots up again. So a one dollar decline is the best time to gas it up. If somehow, the lowest point of price coincides with Thursday, I will then fill up a full tank with premium gas to clean the engine otherwise, I am contend with using ordinaire.

Timing traffic (~$40)

It is my understanding that traffic jam wastes the most gas. An alternative route was thought up along with changing my work schedule to avoid the 8AM~9AM morning rush as well as the 5PM to 6PM rush hour. This represents a 1 hour reduction in commuting time everyday and a ~$40 decrease in gas usage after the second month. I also noticed that the afternoon traffic jam last longer and are more congested than the morning. Probably because of all the trucks that are taking up all the room.

Streamlined driving (~$???)

This may or may not have contributed to anything, but I’ve also changed my driving habit by reducing the amount of time and force applied to my breaks. I observe and noted the timings of lights so that I don’t have to hit the breaks too often. Sure, it means that I sometimes drive really slowly and other cars passes me by, but in terms of city driving, it only results to a 3~7 minute time saving. Timing traffic jams helps to offset this difference. When must comes to must and I do have to stop at a red light, a gear shift to neutral also helps reduction in gas usage. On top of that, I usually turn my heater/ac off about 3/4 of the way to the destination. These are still experimental and the results are not directly observable. We’ll see in the future if the gasoline cost reduces to below $90.35.

Further cost reductions

Food and electricity savings will be discussed in the future as data are still coming in. I am still waiting for my new electricity bill for the coldest February and March period. On the food front, although I’ve switched to using raw ingredients in cooking, I am still going out dining with people and experimenting with food. Whatever reduction in food cost are put into the experiments. I have yet to switch to maintenance mode by cooking only the most delicious value/buck food. However, I’ve started doing that starting last month and found some joy in investigating how to make cheap but delicious mass production meals. Bread research is in the fine tuning stage so I have started looking into Spaghetti sauces to add more variety to my cheap meals.