Hardball

What are you doing to offset the high price of gas and food? Are you prepared for the downturn in the economy? Give us your best frugal ideas.

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Mike Brewer

I for one have cut my gas useage down to less than $100 a month, and I cover over 200 miles a week for my work alone. I use public transportation - the Washington D.C. Metro system is one of the best anywhere - and am careful to "zone" my activities so that I can take care of several things at one visit anytime I'm in a given area. I'll wait to do my grocery shopping, for example, until I have something else to do in that part of town and then I'll make one trip for both.

I know it sounds like a reach, but I also spend some time each week writing to Senators and Representatives in Congress regarding the self-destructive tax system we work under right now. The most serious obstacle to alternative fuels right now is that nearly everything that has to do with transport in the US, from roads to construction to clean ups, is based on...you guessed it...gas taxes. The less gas we use, the more money we lose for road projects. Right now, there's no other source of revenues for these kinds of things, and when roads fall apart, trade falls apart. There's an environmental incentive to use less gas, but the economy is literally built around our consumption of it. Unless we can make some changes and cut the taxes on gas, develop our revenue from other sources, and make (as opposed to "find") ways to keep up the roads using other means while at the same time making gas affordable again, we're only going to see things get worse.

By the way, if the government decided, for example, to cut taxes on gas to a standard sales tax level, we'd save over a buck a gallon right out of the gate. If they instead increased vehicle sales taxes (just the tax - not the price of the car) by 10%, license and registration sales taxes by 10%, and instituted a tax on insurace for an additional 3%, we'd be ahead of where we are now, and the consumer savings would ultimately work out higher in the long run. In other words, the government would make the same money for the same projects on the same vehicles, except instead of taking their money out of the gas tank, they'd be taxing the thing that uses the roads - no matter what kind of fuel it uses.

That in turn would free up the auto industry to make alternative fuel vehicles, and the government could support it because there would be no economic disadvantage to non-petroleum vehicles. The government could even authorize grants and research funding for alternative fuels, confident that any developments in those areas would return their money in sales of the end products. The roads are secure, the oil is cheap, and the revenues actually increase over the long run. It's an all-around win.

The trouble is, it takes a tax hike on some products up front, and partisan politics would tear that apart no matter how good an idea it might be.

GQchris

Pack your lunch, eating out adds up. Keep the eating out to a minimum if you must. That should save you 200 dollars or more every month.

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Ghost

surely it makes more sense to increase the price of gas so that public transport is used instead. increasing fuel costs reduces car sales and makes people look for more economical cars.
this in turn spurs manufacturers to make more fuel efficient cars and drives research into alternative fuel sources by car manufacturers.
lowering tax on gas makes gas powered vehicles a more affordable option and has the opposite effect.

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GQchris

Quitting smoking would be a good time right now, as well as switching to cheaper booze or cutting out booze altogether.

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Mike Brewer

DAMN that! Cheap booze? Horseshit!

I'll give up fast food, eating out, even driving. I'll give up my high priced call girls, my expensive internet porn memberships, and my weekly donkey shows. I'll give up my monthly donations to charities and I'll re-use the clothes I'd normally donate to Goodwill, but you can have my cigars and small batch whiskeys when you pry them from my cold dead hands! (R.I.P. Mr. Heston...)

GQchris

LMAO!! Pabst is a money saver man, LOL!! j/k

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Mike Brewer

I just recently got into this beercalled Pilzner Urquell from the Czech Republic. It's a lighter pilsner, kind of summer-ish, with a good barley flavor.

Oh, and Pabst can go fcuk itself.

Garland

I don't know if we can still associate with one another...



PBR: it's not a beer...it's a way of life.

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Komm Susser Todd.

No, no...no no no...whatever you are drinking, you need much, much more...and then to sleep. - jubaji

DickHardman

ive been buying halfs instead of full ounces. thats about it.

Mike Brewer

Garland, you're in college and cannot be held accountable for your tragic lack of taste and class. As a bachelor and a young student ignorant in the ways and means of culture and respectability, you're forgiven. Also, I presume you're broke most of the time, and your basic choices are whatever swill you can sop up off the tables after customers leave, or barley-pop piss water in half-oxidized cans. As such, your choice is understandable if still somewhat pitiful.

I, on the other hand, am a model of modern manhood and I am held to a higher standard. I have no excuses for such a lack of refinement, and I am expected to exhibit my "wild man" side only when it serves to achieve a desired effect. Even when attending such archetypal testosterone-driven activities as prizefights, bullfights, and back-alley donkey shows, I am expected to carry myself with a certain je ne sais quoi that would never allow for such cretin indulgences as...Pabst Blue Ribbon. For the most part, I'm a cultivated ape; no one would take me seriously in the slightest if they saw me drinking Old Crow or Pabst. It would likely get me drummed out of the halls of power as quickly as you would be drummed out of the keg party for suggesting that everyone settle in for a nice Perdomo and Single Malt Aberlour. Your peers would rightly see you as the kind of presumptuous shit that thinks it's cool to use a straight razor in the day and age of Norelco, just as my peers would rightly see me as a grown man with Peter Pan syndrome who secretly dressed in baggy pants and backward ball caps if I showed up drinking a Pabst from the can.

Alas, we're from two different worlds, you and I. Thankfully, things evolve in my direction more often than in yours. In ten years, I suspect we'll be hanging around in London together drinking expensive Gran Reserva Rioja on Michael Wright's dime together, laughing about your heathen youth.

Right before we go to the local pub, get shitty on Guiness, and throw darts at each other.

(And by the way, I hope you appreciate the level of craftsmanship in my Frasier-esque reply here. I actually picturesd the good Dr. Crane giving that speech as I wrote it, and it was funny as hell! If I could rep me for it, I would.)

Tant01

How quickly things degenerate into the abyss that is beer...

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Mike Brewer

At some level, it really is a viable answer to the question.

Tom Yum

LMAO! Mike, I was actually picturing someone else while reading your response - anyhow, some ideas on saving during hard times.

Excercise - Go running at your local highschool's track. Do the bleechers. Use the pull-up and dip bars. Its usually opened to the public in the late afternoon to early evening hours. There are alot of weightless excercises you can do and it won't cost you a dime in gym memberships.

Transportation - instead of driving, walk to the grociery store if its less than 5 miles away. If you live in a bike-friendly city, go for it. Use your car as minimally as possible. You'll burn even more calories.

Food = Pack Lunch (good one Chris)

Booze = Drink the cheap stuff, as suggested earlier.

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TTEscrima

Go commando, get rid of cable TV, dump the home telephone line, take advantage of the free porn on the net and give up the subscription sites, but NEVER drink cheap booze!!