How the Price of Gas Has Affected My Lifestyle
Over the past 50 years the population of the county has spread out over the countryside. While the majority of employment opportunities still remain in urban areas, forcing lengthy commutes for many rural residents.
Now they’re trapped, their lives are invested in their country homes. With no alternative for the commute to work, their income is greatly diminished by the cost of transportation. Rapidly they will be working only to support the trip to work.
My wife and I are among the fortunate few who made some very sensible decisions a few years back. Moving from Texas to our hometown of Duluth, Minnesota back in 2003. When we arrived home we chose to buy a new mobile home rather then the much larger investment of a house. A house would have much higher payments, and be more expensive to operate and maintain. Today’s mobile homes (at least in Minnesota) are built to very high standards with 2×6 walls, double pane windows, and energy efficient appliances. Utilities are a fraction of what an older home would be.
The community we chose is located on the fringe of the city, providing us with a suburban, almost rural setting. It’s also on the city bus line. My wife prefers to ride the bus over driving, a monthly bus pass for $35 was a no brainer for her.
My job is driving a handi-capped bus. A split shift with morning and late afternoon routes. The bus is parked in front of my house when not in use, requiring me to commute about 25′. The length of my sidewalk and I’m on the payroll.
We have two vehicles, a newer GMC flex fuel pickup with which I only use E-85 ethanol based fuel. Our other car is a Geo Tracker that gets +30 mpg. As we don’t use either for daily work transportation they spend the majority of their time sitting in the driveway. With our minimal use of our vehicles we spend $100 a month or less of fuel.
Our one leisure activity is camping with our 24′ travel trailer. We usually go to a campground that is only 25 miles away. This year we may limit our outings to the three major weekends, Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day. If we found a close by resort that we could park our travel trailer at, we could eliminate some of the fuel expense for that activity as well.
By consolidating trips, many weeks they never move except for the one weekly outing for groceries and other essential items. We try very hard to organize our shopping so it’s accomplished in this once a week trip.
Being Diabetic we gave up restaurants a couple years ago. Maintaining good glucose levels is easier at home. Going out is a luxury we miss, but can surly live without.
Because we set up our lifestyle as we have, the effect of high fuel prices on our lives has been manageable. With the cost of food accelerating just as fast, our focus has been to down size, reduce debt, and learn to find activities at home that are satisfying.
We’re lucky, without particularly planning for it, we have placed ourselves in the best possible position. We have no credit card debt, by the end of the year we will have no debt period. All we have left is the last bit of house payments that we can finish off 10 years early by the end of the year.
We do not require personal transportation at all, when it becomes so expensive to be impractical, so be it. The vehicles will get parked.
Do we stand to loose value on our investment, of course. A twenty thousand dollar truck that you can’t drive is worthless. We have so much on the plus side due to making good choices in the past five years that I’m confident we will financially survive. That’s more then many people in this country can say.
