May 17th, 2008
The 5% Plan: Cutting Down Gasoline Use
Yes, gasoline prices are going wild. It’s affecting everyone who drives, and even those who don’t–if you rely on public transportation, for instance, you’re probably finding more and more company on your busses and trains. Despite my already using a 5% gas back card, I want to find ways to get more financially efficient with gasoline..
Reading The Wisdom Journal’s recent post on ways to use less gas and a recent CNNMoney.com article on gas saving myths have me thinking about a goal and a plan. While I considered making my goal either “spend 5% less on gas” or “increase gas mileage by 5%”, I realized that I don’t have control over how much I’m being charged for gas at the local station, and getting better mileage doesn’t really mean a lot if I’m also increasing my miles by 5%. So, instead, my goal is to reduce my consumption of gas by 5%.
To start with, I need a baseline: how much gas am I using right now? So starting Sunday, I will keep track of how many miles I drive doing a “normal” week, meaning going to both my jobs and doing the usual things I do on my off time driving, like going to the bank, library, post office, and temple.
Secondly, I need to come up with some things I will change to see if I can make a difference. I have some ideas already, including changing the route I drive to work to try to avoid traffic, eliminating one trip into metropolitan Honolulu every four days off I have (I typically go into town daily), and using my bicycle for any “in Kane’ohe only” errands, with the possible exception of grocery shopping (since I can’t carry all that much on the Cannondale!).
Thirdly, I need to implement these changes and stick with them. This will require discipline and planning, and this blog to help me stick to the plan!
Finally, I need to evaluate. Are these things really making a difference? I’ll have to compare my results to what I found was my baseline.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks to see how I do!
My dad makes an interesting point — it’s actually a good thing that prices are going up for gasoline, because it might finally force us to get on the ball with finding alternative fuel sources.
Sheppy,
In large part I agree, but I also have to get the bleeding to stop.
One other suggestion: try to make only [mostly] right turns! UPS has found it saves a ton of money.
Hey Ryan, thanks for mentioning my article!
[...] Use Posted in May 28th, 2008 by admin in Budgeting, Frugality, Goals As you may remember from my post earlier this month about my goal of cutting gasoline use by 5%, I needed to get a baseline for my gasoline use. I took the week of May 18, 2008 through May 24, [...]
[...] continuing to work on reducing my gasoline use. As you may recall, my goal–5% less gasoline use from my baseline of 10.5 gallons per week–means keeping [...]