Are high gas prices changing your spending or travel plans?
With gasoline prices hovering at $4 a gallon nationally, many Americans are making tough choices: scaling back summer vacations, driving less or ditching the car altogether, Associated Press reports.
An Associated Press-GfK poll shows the share of Americans who say increases in the price of gasoline will cause serious financial hardship in the next six months now tops 4 in 10.
Overall in the poll, 71 percent said rising prices will cause some hardship for them and their family, AP reports.
Some seniors are choosing a tank of gas over their prescriptions, AP writes.
Have high gas prices caused you to change your spending?
Have they made a joke of your New Year’s resolution to save more?
Are you cutting back plans for Memorial Day weekend or the summer?
How are you affected?
- Henry Unger, The Biz Beat
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67 comments Add your comment
marcus
May 21st, 2011
9:15 am
Some thoughts
We live in town 4 miles away from work and school, when we do drive I have 250cc scooter (75mpg) and the wife drives a Prius, we bought used for like 12k. Yes I could afford to drive a M3 or Land Rover like some of my neighbors, but why? Instead we pay for school outright and take extended vacations.
Ga Dawg
May 21st, 2011
9:19 am
@ JASON -
Wonderful, uplifting post! You sound like a humble man too. That in itself i impressive, especially for your seemingly younger age. Kudos to you (although it is obvious that your post is not about receiving accolades) for being a thoughtful, intentional leader of your home and family. We just crossed our 20 year anniversary and while we haven’t had blunders and have made good decisions financially, I can say we weren’t as intentional as you. Hope your summer is full of blessings as I’m sure it will be
marcus
May 21st, 2011
9:28 am
Also things like cutting cable (our kid’s grades went up when we did this), cutting the phone land line, reducing mobile phone use, using skype instead, eating out only once a week, and taking lunch to work (wife lost a few pounds doing this). These small steps wont make me part of the billionaires club any time soon, what they do is free up money for stuff we really want to do, not just in the habit of doing.
marcus
May 21st, 2011
9:29 am
Thanks Jason, best wishes to you and yours!
DrB
May 21st, 2011
6:20 pm
Spouse works from home, my commute is modest, we live well beneath our means. The gas price is not stopping us from taking a multweek family camping trip traveling the western US in a VW van.
Matt M
May 22nd, 2011
2:15 am
Average annual miles: 15,000
Average MPG: 24
Annual Gas @ $2.25 = $1406.25
Annual Gas @ $3.85 = $2406.25
==========================
Annual Difference: $1000; That’s $83/month.
If you’re having to modify your budget for a little over $20/week, you need to blame poor career choices and/or your lack of job skills, nothing else. Think I am wrong? How much do you pay weekly for your TV? Your iPhone? Stop your whining and realize you have never had cash to spend.
Steve
May 22nd, 2011
6:43 am
Yes, gas prices are influencing our summer plans. Instead of our usual Florida trip, we’ll be heading to Lake Lanier. Always wanted to do it, and it’s good for the local economy.
Carla
May 22nd, 2011
10:09 am
Ok Matt M..while you are playing the gas numbers game and blaming…did you also adjust for the price change in ALL other products? Mainly food prices? And STOPPPPP Judging and looking down on the poor. There are a million stories in this city. Everyone has one to tell. Some people like money more than other people. We live on one income. Why? Because when it came down to it I decided to stay home and raise my son instead of having a nice car and purses and shoes and all the stuff YOU probably work for. Yes, we struggle. We also do it on our own and don’t ask for help. And I’m not asking for sympathy or bemoning the fact that we struggle some…especially here lately. But it is arogent to even assume anything about my life or my life chioces. We HAVE cut all our extra services when need be. We only have basic everything. So yeah, the budget we had in mind when my child was born years ago looks much different today and high gas prices can be blamed for part of that.
karen
May 22nd, 2011
10:35 am
Forget the traveling. Unfortunately, we have to decide between gas to get to work or food for the week. Luckily we share costs with parents, but it is still hard. It will probably be a soup week just to be able to go to work.
Carla
May 22nd, 2011
10:51 am
@Karen…I feel your pain. Best of luck to you. We have a bunch of soup nights around here too….with leftovers usually the next night. We have started buying in bulk and splitting it with our in-laws..it doesn’t save a whole lot but right now every penny helps. We also make a bunch of cheap, one pot meals and share and freeze so it doesn’t get so old.
And to those of you out there who never thought of $20 as a lot of money…well I’m real happy for you. In our real world, right here in America, $20 can be the difference between full and just full enough not to be hungry. $20 can be the difference in ..do I buy this fresh piece of fruit..or for the same price do I go buy a jar of applesauce..or even worse..junk food is always cheaper. A whole bag of chips can be cheaper than two pieces of fruit. If you have to feed a family for a week…do you spend that money on a snack to last one day..or do you buy what will streatch the week. Cause it’s kinda funny…there are a lot of things we can do without as people…but darn it…our bodies just insist that we feed them.
The 'Single Income' Family
May 22nd, 2011
11:45 am
As a ‘64′ year old, single-income wage earner family, nearing retirement age, my wife and I have already adjusted our automobile use when prices went over $3.50 a gallon…..No vacations anymore for us, only ‘STAY-cations’. No leisurely drives to the mountains anymore, unless its work related, and only well-planned visits with family and friends anymore. In fact, I get ‘nauseaus’ every time I fill-up, even though we both drive gas-mileage sensible vehicles. To us, its a national tragedy that we as a nation are “held hostage” (so-to-speak) by OPEC! Energy independence could have already been accomplished by now, if we had Senators and Congressmen with some spine, who were’nt beholden to ‘BIG_OIL’ for their campaign contributions! It seems to us that our political leaders are more interested in RE-election than in doing what’s right for the American People! To say that we’re both disgusted is an understatement!
Erica
May 22nd, 2011
12:26 pm
We’ve changed our plans for both Memorial day and the summer. We were considering going to my father’s over Memorial day (about a 3 hour drive), but opted to stay home. We’ve got a 2 week beach trip planned for the summer (1 week with my mother’s family and 1 with my father’s). A different set of people are going on the 2nd trip than the 1st, requiring we bring two cars for the 2nd trip, but not the 1st. We were going to bring both cars on the 1st trip and drive from there to the 2nd trip, stopping to visit family on the day in between the two trips, but we’ve decided to come back home for a night to pick up the 2nd car, rather than take it on an extra drive just for the convenience of not coming back home in between. We did the math and it saves about $400 to take the car with better gas mileage on the 1st trip, drive it back, and pick up the 2nd car for the 2nd trip.
Luckily we’re both well employed and have decent savings, so adjusting our family’s plans isn’t a necessity like it is for so many people, but it’s not about whether we can afford to pay $4+ a gallon or not. It’s about whether it’s worth spending that money when we don’t need or have to, and we could save it. We carefully balanced our options between our vacation plans and the cost of gas and decided to cut back our travel plans while gas prices stay so high. We decided to stick to the original budget we set for summer vacations and trips, which means cutting back due to high gas prices.
TnGelding
May 22nd, 2011
7:25 pm
The ‘Single Income’ Family
May 22nd, 2011
11:45 am
OPEC doesn’t control the price of oil.
al.com
May 22nd, 2011
11:21 pm
Remember when the fools that voted for obama thought they were going to get free gas. Surprise no hope and no chance with this loser as president.
al.com
May 22nd, 2011
11:37 pm
What do you expect when you have a president that will not let us drill for oil. We have more resources than the mid east yet the left wing dems will not let us drill. Why are we surprised when oil goes up?
A.S.Mathew
May 23rd, 2011
12:41 pm
If everybody had regular job and overtime, the $ 4.00 gas price might not
have created much stress or confusion. But, since the economy is in a
serious meltdown, majority of the people are too cautious before
driving for anything. By watching the empty roads, it is a very clear
signal that more people are highly concerned with the gas price and
less people are less concerned with the high gas price.
aquaticintrospe
May 26th, 2011
2:37 pm
I paid $32.67 for a XBOX 360 and my mom got a 17 inch Toshiba laptop for $94.83 being delivered to our house tomorrow by FedEX. I will never again pay expensive retail prices at stores. I even sold a 46 inch HDTV to my boss for $650 and it only cost me $52.78 to get. Here is the website we using to get all this stuff, http://BidsWork.com