Higher Gasoline Prices Saves Lives?

Normally I don’t read about.com. But today, I stumbled across a little article that they have posted called “Higher Gas Prices Save Lives” by Mark Stibich.

I’m not disputing the article, because essentially I believe that it is correct. It states basically that because gasoline prices are higher there will be fewer people driving and when fewer people drive there are going to be less accidents and less people die.

My main beef with the article which leaves you with a feeling that gasoline prices being higher is actually a good thing and a blessing in disguise. I personally have seen several people in my office have to skip working on days before payday because their gas money has given out. They couldn’t afford to drive to work. If you can’t afford to drive to work you are giving up a day’s wages which translates into less money the next go around. If your are having trouble paying for gasoline to get to work then something has to be cut out. And if you felt that skipping work (and the money you would have made) is a good choice then you probably also think that skimping on food or eating unhealthy cheaper choices is a good idea too. So health problems ensue. Doubly true if food prices are going up as gasoline prices it makes sense to cut there.

Yes, Americans tend to be overweight so maybe this kind of “diet” wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but unhealthy choices, no matter what they are, aren’t a good thing. Ever.

While sitting here today wondering about my budget and how I stand financially, whether my head is still “above the water” as it is and all the thought about current gasoline prices came up several times. Why are gas prices so high? Afraid that that kind of question isn’t something that I can really answer. I can suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the US $ is so devalued right now and since we are buying so much oil from overseas where our dollar isn’t worth as much, then we have to pay lots more for it.

Still I don’t fully understand how gasoline prices have nearly doubled or tripled in a short time span. I know they’ve gone up nearly $1 this year (and its only half over) in my area.

But, that isn’t the subject of this post! This post is more about your filling up habits. And it turns out, according to this news story that many people aren’t filling their gas tanks up enough and they are running out of gas! Gas prices are seemingly forcing drivers to only partially fill up their tanks and then they end up running out of gas when they don’t closely watch their gauges.

Now, there is nothing wrong with only putting a little gasoline in your tank. If you don’t have the money you don’t have it and it is always better to avoid “charging” it when you know you aren’t going to be paying it off. But, sometimes you have to get where you need to get and remember that running out of gasoline not only can strand you and all, but it could (in rare cases I believe) end up making your car hard to restart and needing servicing - which is going to cost you more than having put a few extra dollars in!

The moral of the story is, that if you are trying this tactic of just putting in a little when you fill up then make sure you watch that gauge! Know how far you can go before having to fill up again and don’t put off filling up when you can or know you should. Don’t try to push it!

So in today’s episode (haha) I want to just remind you quickly that there are plenty of ways to save money, and one of them is to simply make tradeoffs! What do I mean by tradeoffs?

Well, it is the things that you do instead of what you normally would of done. You and some friends want to have dinner, well, that means eating out somewhere, and if you want something nice and quiet it’ll probably cost $15 a person or so. Instead, you could all go to someone’s home or apartment and light up a grill and make some steaks, which the steaks, salads, potatos, and desert may run just a little over $15 for a group of 4 or so. So, the food you’ll be eating will not be prepared in some kitchen somewhere, but it’ll be fun making it yourselves and it will save everyone over half.

You can do this with all sorts of things, car washes, nights out at the movies, bring lunch instead of buying, etc.

The key, though, is to take charge of the money that you “save”. If you save $50 this week and splurge it somewhere else, what good was saving? Well, really it means you aren’t $100 in the hole, but if you didn’t spend it, but instead marked it for savings or bills or put it directly into savings, well, you’d be way ahead of the game!

So next time, think trade-offs! Is there something else you can do that’d be just as fun and cost a lot less? And if you find something like that, then do it!

Saving money is important. One reason is that when you set aside some money, when bad things happen you’ll have a reserve there to spend on the needs. “Saving for a rainy day” if you recall that old adage that your parents and teachers probably taught you.

Trouble is, savings is preparing for the future and is delaying the gratification you could have by spending the money on something now! So how do you balance between the two?

One way is that you should never tell yourself that you must stop spending and you should only be savings towards an emergency. Always planning for the impending emergency may make your subconscious get you into one!

So spending some is ok. The one way that you probably want to spend the money is in a way that makes the most impact! So, look around you. What do you see that you’ve spent money on? What of that makes you the most happy? What makes you less happy? When you realize that everything you have there that you’ve bought you’ve spent hard earned money on. So prioritize. The things that make you the most happy, spend towards those, and skimp or cut back on the lesser happiness making ones!

Rent or mortgage, yeah - makes you happy to be under a roof than a bridge. TV, if your life is really watching tv and keeping up on what’s on every night, then perhaps cutting back tv isn’t the best choice for you since that makes you happy. In my case, I think spending some money on a housecleaning service might be a good idea! It wouldn’t be that expensive but it’d make me really happy to not have to scrub floors and bathrooms!

So, take a little while, look around, the things that don’t make you particularly happy and you can cut back on, then do it! Don’t spend money on the mediocre happiness things that aren’t necessities! Let me know how it goes!

A very good one of the strategies to save money is to set goals. When you have a goal for what you are saving toward, that new car, or vacation, or big screen LCD tv, having that goal and that gratification of achieving it are powerful forces to drive you to save even more!

So how is it that you can keep yourself on target? Keep always heading towards that goal?

One very easy way is to keep that “carrot” always in front of your nose. And just how does this work?

Well … easy! You’ve done the hard part, that is to set up a specific goal you want to save towards. For an example here you are saving towards a newer car. You have an idea what kind of car you want, right? How about a Honda CR-V? Ok, great! Do you know the color? Red? Wonderful!

Now, why not find any pictures of Red Honda CR-Vs that you can, print them or cut them out of magazines and put them places. Put one beside the tv so that when you watch tv you’ll see it. Put one in your car. Put one on the bathroom mirror so you’ll see it every morning. Sometimes, a picture isn’t appropriate - so put a post-it note, or something similar with the words that describe what you are saving towards. These little pictures will be a constant motivation towards the goal you are working on.

And, for me, something like this that I knew my friends, family, and co-workers might see would be an even great incentive as I know that they’ll see the photo too and occasionally ask me how my goal seeking is going!

How easy is this? Now, get going … Know your goal, find ways to keep visualizations of that goal in front of you and it will subconsciously encourage you to save and to be more frugal and to waste less money. Or perhaps it will even encourage you to find additional ways to earn more!

Gasoline just seems to keep going up and up. In fact, I saw a newspaper article about the rising gasoline prices and how they were at an all time high, and looked at the price and went wow, I’d be happy to pay that now. Sad thing was the article was about a month old, and it was $.50 less! So, here you have practically $1 increase in gasoline prices this year!

So … what do you do? What are you supposed to do when it blows your budget? A typical driver spends approximately $3,000 per year in gasoline at these prices. If you are making $30,000 per year, then you’ve just spent 10% of your gross pay in gasoline - this doesn’t include the cost of the car or insurance or repairs. It is gasoline cost only! Out of your take home pay check this is even a higher percentage. Add that to the housing costs and food costs (which are also increasing) and well, your heading for problems.

Trouble is, if you are like most people then you can’t not buy it. There are precious few real working gasoline alternatives. And as the average gasoline prices skyrocket, how do you cope.

First: Knowing the above, you can’t not buy it, don’t worry over it. Worry only hurts the situation. Don’t be stupid, a driving a zillion more miles than you need to, try and cut back but don’t needlessly fret over the price.

Second: Realize the true extra cost of that gasoline. You have a twenty gallon tank, gasoline is five cents more per gallon than it was last week. Don’t get frustrated, upset or angry as all of those are counterproductive. Just realize that you just spend $1 more than you did last week to fill your tank. Now unless you have a little cushion in your budget, you need to recapture that $1 somewhere else during the week. Is it not buying the cup of coffee in the convenience store when you buy the gasoline? Is it ordering water when you get your lunch this week? What is it, but it needs to be something. Again, don’t let it ruin your day, but do know you need to recover what you’ve overspent.

Third: If you are seriously out of whack on budgeted gasoline to actual spend (like I am) then you need to take control. How much wiggle room do you have? If you have budgeted correctly you’ll have some, and know that you can use that. But I still say don’t use it. Take what you’ve overspent and recapture now, leave the wiggle room for when you truly need it. This is an ongoing regular expenditure, the wiggle room is for those unexpected things.

Fourth: Cut back on something. And now. For me the easiest thing to cut on what food. Stop going to eat out so much, bring my lunch to work, buy things in bigger bulk packages (that truly save money because not all bulk items do save). I hate to say food, because food is one of the things that the money from typically stays here in the US. If you buy light bulbs or things you need more likely than not that money will end up going to China which furthers the trade imbalance and the US$ continues to slide and gasoline continues to climb. Anyway, you have to make sure your financially sound, so if this is the easiest place for you to save, then do it.

Fifth: Cut the extras. This is another easy cutting area. Extras. Do you have extras on your telephone, cable, or cell phones? Newspapers or magazines you could cut? Gym memberships you aren’t using? If so, cut them and be sure to move the extra money straight off to savings.

Those are some quick tips on how to approach the gasoline crisis in your life. Remember - don’t panic, take it easy, realize the true extent of the damage and compensate for it. If you have to ask for that raise, then do, but regardless take some action, don’t sit there and let it destroy your financial stability.

I hardly think so, but apparently a Russian “doomsday cult” believes it. In Nikolskoe, Russia a group hunkering in a bunker believes credit card and food UPC codes are satanic. They have about 30 followers. Since last October they have been barricaded in to escape an upcoming (April or May 2008) apocolypse. Authorities are saying the group is formed by preacher Pyotr Kuznetsov who did not join his flock in the bunker because God had given him other work to do.

“Kuznetsov was freed temporarily from a psychiatric hospital to return to Nikolskoe to be with the women who left the bunker.”

Read the article here.

Hey, this is a pretty neat little article in the Dallas News, that shows how the weak US dollar may impact your ability to get your hands on a Wii. Is it is areal supply shortage or is it merely that the prices of unit in Europe, Britain, and other places are still high but their money is worth more so Nintendo is sending more of its supply there? When the demand decreases then more will eventually make it to the US.

All because the dollar is not worth as much to Nintendo…!

Read it here.

Today I thought I’d check on the status of my last post to this blog. I wrote about checking with the IRS to see the status of your requested tax refund.

Anyway, I couldn’t find it. I must really suck at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or maybe I just don’t have enough readership yet.

Regardless, I see though in the search results a blog that has posted about the same thing. Except their blog is all about penis enlargement. Hmmm… That’s a very interesting combination! Tax refund and penis enlargement, lol! Does the prospect that a check is coming in the mail from the IRS really do it for some people?

Very useful info for those of you who may be expecting a tax refund this year. The IRS has a toll-free number that you can call to track the status of your refund, whether you are getting a paper check or electronically deposited cash.

Now, for several years, people could go to a website to check the status, but now, presto! you have instant telephone access to the same information!

Simply dial 800-829-1954. You’ll need your taxpayer # (Social Security Number) and the amount of the refund your expecting. That’s it! Have fun!

Oh, and click here for the online version.

In case you are wondering, smart money management says that you don’t get a refund from the IRS each year. What you do is pay them the maximum you can without owing a penalty. A refund is essentially saying that you gave the government an interest free loan over the past year. So, be smarter with your cash - it will do a better job in your pocket. ok?