Psychosis on the Road to Financial Freedom

Just when you think you are getting the budget under control, gas prices shoot up twelve cents a gallon in the last two weeks. I don’t know about you, but for me, the gas budget is one of the hardest to budget for because the price of gas is so volatile - not to mention that I don’t drive the exact same number of miles every month. To make matters worst, I just heard on the news last night and this morning that gas prices are expected to go up 25 to 30 cents per gallon in the next 6 months. Times are getting hard. It’s especially difficult when you are working to get out of debt and trying to scrape up every penny to go towards pay off debt.

Here are some suggestions I have to manage this a bit better :

• Keep a mileage log every month. This log doesn’t have to be very detailed, just track the starting mileage at the beginning of the month and the ending mileage at the end of the month. After three or four months, you can see how many miles you average per month.
• Keep track of how many gallons of gas you put in your car in a month. After three or four months, you can average this out and see how many gallons you average per month.
• When it comes to figuring a budget for the month for gas, figure out what the current price per gallon is and add 5% to that (just in case). Then take your average gallons per month and multiply it times that price. So in other words, if the current price per gallon is $3.00, then an increase of 5% would mean you would calculate $3.15 per gallon for the next month. Take that price per gallon and multiply it times your average gallons per month and that would be the budget for that month. Sometimes the price would be higher, and sometimes it would be lower - but I can promise you there will not be nay surprises!