An Unpleasant Surprise:Your Annual Cost of Gas

How much do you spend on gas over a 12 month period? If you know, you are unusual. As the price of gas increases so has your yearly gasoline cost. Gasoline has become one of the major components of your family budget. In order to maintain a proper family budget you really need to know how much you are spending for gas during the year. Most drivers are familiar with the amount of money it costs to fill the car but few can state with certainty the total spent per year.

It is not hard to calculate and only takes a couple of minutes. Being fairly easy to do, one would think that all drivers would determine their annual expense. But most don't. If they did they might understand the importance making some changes to lower that total.

We see it almost every day, the increases to the price of gas. $3.00 per gallon, $3.19 per gallon, $3.39 per gallon even $3.49 and $3.59 per gallon are prices that we have become familiar with this year. Not too long ago $3.00 per gallon seemed high. Now $3.00 seems almost a bargain.

The American Automobile Association generally figures 15,000 miles as an average amount of miles per vehicle per year.They use that figure when they do cost calculations. If you on average travel 15,000 miles a year in a auto that has a fuel economy of 20 miles to the gallon, you will purchase somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 gallons of fuel per year. If the price is $3.00/gallon that means an expense of $2250.00 per year.

If you are part of a two vehicle household and both vehicles average 15,000 miles per year you will use 1500 gallons of fuel annually. 1500 gallons at a pump price of $3.00 per gallon is an expense of $4500.00 per year.

Of course if the price of gas is $3.49 per gallon the numbers are much higher. If you are a single car household driving 15,000 miles per year you will have an expense of over $2600.00 annually. If you are a two car household your yearly expense will be over $5200.00 per year. That is equal to $437.00 monthly. You could likely be spending more for gasoline than you spend on a monthly car payment.

Each time the price of gasoline goes up at the gas pump by 10 cents the annual increase for your two car household is $150.00 per year. When the price jumps 20 cents in one day, realize that the 20 cent increase will cost you $300.00 per year.

When you think about the annual cost of your gas it is very sobering. When you think about spending $5200.00 per year, you might want to serious look at ways to reduce that cost. When you realize that the 20 cent increase today will cost you $300.00 this year you might decide now is the time to do something about it.

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