I went to the gas station to buy cigarettes (of course I didn't need gas) and me, another customer and the clerk were discussing the rising prices of gas lately and the other customer said, "It just cost me $110 to fill up my F150". I told him that even at $4.00/gal it will only set me back $40.

 

Although $4/gal will not hurt us Fit owners too bad, it still makes me cry at night.

 

Growing up in Venezuela, gas was .23/gal and it's not much more now. I remember my Dad filling up his VW Bug with $2.

 

Now quit smoking, and you won't even feel the crunch at all.



When they hit just under ten bucks, I quit cold turkey right then and there. That was almost nine months ago. My habit of about a pack a day put me at 300 bucks a month. With the almost 2,700 hundred in savings thus far- in merely nine months- I've bought a Sony Bravia 40" HDTV, Sharp 42" HDTV, and a V-Tron 32" HDTV, which completes the entire upgrade to the tv's needed in my house. And I have a large chunk of that money left over too. Not only are my lungs & heart happy, I can't begin to tell you how happy my eyes are! I always said to my family, we just can't afford new tv's- sorry. Instead of my selfish asshole habit that was literally bleeding me dry of money, my whole family enjoys HDTV's now and I didn't even miss the money.

Do the math, if nothing else....

Dan

 

I will be 5 years this May. I feel great.

 

Dan- Congrats to you! I haven't smoked in many years, since I was in my 20's. Talk about inflation!! I remember when a pack of cigarettes was 30 cents (if you went to some stores you could even get them for 25 cents) Now they are $5 a pack.

 

I don't know how people do it....well obviously they just make more money than I do. I've been lucky enough to spend some time in England and Ireland...and what I noticed is that a lot of people seemed to own 2 vehicles. One a small and economical "Fit Like" vehicle...and the other a bigger, more luxurious vehicle. The smaller vehicle was the 95%+ of the time vehicle, while the larger was almost exclusively for weekends or family outings....

That's almost to me the only way it would be reasonable to keep operating a large vehicle, unless you just have money to burn.

 

Yeah.. feels good to be a FIT owner... each time you fuel up and think about your conversation with the F150 owner, its like someone passed you $70+ cash for driving a FIT instead of driving a F150. If you fuel up 4 times a month, that will be $70 x 4

 

There has always existed an extremely popular big-ego incentive to display opulence.
Today [as in right now] our government is trying to decide on an emergency spending plan because the USA does not have a budget in place.

If it takes $110 or $200 fill-ups and neighborhoods of foreclosed mcmansions to finally get us on track, I'm all for it and do snicker at the pump...

As far as the price of smokes - people seem to be willing to pay a lot of money to do their body harm.
It's the price of 'butter-and-eggs' that really troubles me.

I would rather see blatant corporate greed be addressed and would contribute to a common-sense vaccine and support childhood vaccination.

 

Guy who parks beside me at the apartment complex went out and traded his Toyota 4Runner for a new Dodge pickup crewcab with the Hemi.

I can only imagine how much filling that thing hurts at the pumps. But, this is Texas... the land where folks buy pickups and SUVs whether they actually need them or not.

Now me, I'm still running around in a 2001 Dodge Neon that will be replaced this summer with a Fit. Guess I'm bucking the Texas trend towards bigger is better.

Oh wait... my bank account will be fatter what with the gas and vehicle purchase savings.

 

I'm doing less and less snickering, that's for sure. I appreciate the mpg's I get in my Fit and yeah, I may get to miss a couple of 7 cent price increases the first week when I don't need to gas up, but by the time it's my turn, I feel it regardless. Such increases will not do me well at all throughout the rest of the year, when I'm on the road a lot more for work. One thing is for sure to me, as a whole our economy will spiral right down into a major crash if this gets much worse. We've been conditioned to think, say, 2.60 is great. It's horrid. That was rediculously high at the time. Just because it's fast approaching 4 dollars a gallon doesn't make 2.60 an acceptable low. Conditioning. Not that the economy is fine now, but four dollars a gallon spells a screeching economy going into a crash. Soon after everything starts pulling apart once again. No one drives, no one buys, no one makes money, and it all tumbles down into the hole. There's a lot of things threatening this fragile economy, but the one that will ruin us the quickest is the price of a gallon going wildly up again. Fit, or no Fit.

Hold your breath folks.

Dan

 

I dont do a lot of laughing at the truck owners. I traded off my 56K$ f250 lariat turbo diesel on a Honda Fit? I wouldnt have done it except for the ex-wife thinking she needed me to pay her for her interest in the truck. Which equaled what it was worth minus what I owed. So I still ended up with nothing~

I am commuting 110 miles every day, so you can probably imagine how much $$ in diesel I was going through. Id drive the GFs camry quite a bit, unless the weather was bad or I was sick of driving her camry. The money Im saving in diesel, is making my car payment... and the Fit doesnt take 14 quarts of oil. O.o

 

I agree with some of your statements, but I don't think the economy will come to a screeching halt. European gas prices have been much higher than ours for a long time (though it was caused by higher gas taxes) and the doomsday scenario hasn't occurred there. I think people will need to make adjustments, such as driving more fuel efficient cars, living closer to their place of work ( city rather than suburbs), buying locally grown produce, etc. Of course, there will be businesses that try to take advantage of the situation, such as charging higher air fare and increasing the baggage fees, etc...

 

$4/gal - makes me sick!!!

 

Up in Canada, Ottawa specifically, they are already paying anywhere from $1.13 to $1.28/liter for gas right now.

That works out to about $4.27 to $4.89/gallon.

 

That's right, it has been hovering around $4.90/gallon in my area in British Columbia, Canada since the unrest in some parts of the world

 

I've never owned a large car/truck before, can't imagine how it feels.




Historical Price Charts - Ontario Gas Prices

 

Yah, I don't really care.

It's not gonna affect me much.

- The Fit gets great mileage (assuming I don't go nuts and trade it for something with more legroom).
- The motorcycle gets better. (~50)
- If it gets really bad, there's an express I can take to work, and dick around on the internet on my iPad all the way in (they have wifi).
- My budget has a lot of 'spare capacity' so to speak - fuel and food expenses don't account for a huge share of it. it's not that I'm high income by any means, but I choose to live well within my means.

I think I blow more on beer than gas any given week.

<rant>The thing is, this was all foreseeable. Gas prices spiked in 2005 around Katrina (let's just ignore the gas crises since they were a generation ago). Prices spiked again in 2006. They went into a huge climb in 2007 and 2008. True, there was a huge reprieve in 2009, but who would seriously believe that $2/gallon gasoline was sustainable? We had a program to allow people to ditch gas-hogs at above market value, and get into more efficient vehicles.

The Katrina spikes were five and a half years ago. That's plenty of time to heed the wake-up call. The 2008 spikes were three years ago. What were people buying for the past 2 years? What are the hot cars on the market? More crossovers. A 400 hp Mustang. I get it, some people need to be able haul things, butthere are options. Somehow all of Europe gets by without everyone and their brother driving Tahoes and Rams. If you like your urban tank and can afford the gas, more power to you. If you bought a vehicle without planning for at least $5 gasoline as a possibility, you have failed the "Not a Moron" test.

I feel for people who are stretched to their limits despite making responsible decisions, but these price spikes bring out a lot of moaning and whining from people who have no grounds for it. If you pet the dog and get bit once, that's unfortunate. If you keep petting the dog, you're a moron. And don't give me the "But I have 8 kids" line. You should have them unless you know you are financially secure.
</rant>

 

Nothing wrong with driving an F150 when you have heavy duty work to do. I ride a motorcycle whenever I simply need to go from A to B quickly and cheaply. The Fit is for my wife, and for when I need to carry stuff. I hitch a small trailer to the Fit on the odd occasion when I need to pick up mulch or haul a sofa or something. During my motorcycle commutes to work I often see people driving big Expeditions and Escalades solo, and it just seems as if they picked the wrong tool for the job.

 

Yah... I really don't care if people have the heavy duty work to do or not. If they can afford the gas and don't mind paying for it, let them have their fun. I could afford to pay for gas in a gashog, but why would I want to? I don't get a thrill out of driving big vehicles. I would consider "Pony"ing up the extra cash for one of the new Mustangs. 20-ish mpg wouldn't be bad, even if prices did shoot up more, but I don't really want to swap cars again at the moment. I'd end up with a ginourmous car payment (like, well over $350) and I don't have any interest in doing that... again, I like to keep my expenses low.