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Gas prices
So Dromers, what're fuel costs around you & how much does that astronomically suck?
If you don't drive or pay for fuel for any regular usage just watch.... And remember, as fuel prices rise so does EVERYTHING else... Gas in the dirty lew is, last I saw this morning, $5.09 a gallon at the 2 stations I go by daily. As someone on a fixed income that hasn't increased at the rate of 60%+ in the last 2 years, the price of fuel is killing me. Almost but not quite literally. And I don't usually go far at all... And have a motorcycle. [Currently thats broken down, with a full tank of gas mind you.] This is the highest price for a gallon of gas I have ever seen in my entire 41+ years of life. In the last 90s when I started driving, gas was just over $1.25ish and got as low as 85-88 cents a gallon. I can only wish gas was that cheap today. Fill the bike for $2 and go ANYWHERE I want... that would be amazing. Now, while the Pedo Pres is not directly responsible in total for fuel prices being so high at least 3 things he has signed or not signed, as the case may be, have directly caused the price of fuel to skyrocket. Not renewing the leases on two drilling locations and killing the pipeline day one of his disastrous installation. I'm not actually looking to piss anyone off with this... but if it does that, I'm not going to cry about it. *shrug* Cry more. :tlol: |
I don't care, I live a city with a functioning public transit system. I have never gotten a driver's license nor do I care about getting one.
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$4.99 this week. Highest so far.
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Used my Kroger points to take my last fill up to $4.00 a gallon.
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Put in 5 gallons a few days ago at $4.79, the most I've personally paid. It has more or less been around $4.59 recently, but figures it went up when I needed a little.
You wanna talk about presidents, well since the last guy basically forced OPEC to cut production to increase prices because he felt that too low of prices was bad, that production cut was supposed to expire by the end of this past April, right? I'd really like to know if they are bothering to ramp production back up again and when that might help things at least a little. :tconfuse: Edit: Okay, I guess new info out there is saying they plan to up production for July and August. Though that would have been nice had they just done it once that deal to cut production expired instead of having to have talks and new deals just to produce more.... eesh. Quote:
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Thanks to whoever keeps fixing my double posts into one...
Indigo, I'm not a fan of gun grabbing Trump.... cry harder. I did enjoy the low gas prices tho. |
You should've invested in an electric car. Have fun paying high prices for your dirty fuel. #sorrynotsorry
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Just under $10 equivalent here right now. So you can't go bitching about high prices because the US is still some of the lowest in the first world heh. One thing I'll agree on, I've been driving nearly 30 years and definitely the most expensive I've ever seen it. I recall the horror and protests nearly 20 years ago when the price jumped about 33% in the space of a week, but even at its highest back then, it was still 60% of the price it is now!
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Let's Go Brandon.:trazz:
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Oh, and on gas prices, it's almost $5 here for me. Not as high as other places, but it's still affecting my savings. By the way, people, spare us the condescending 'just use public transit' advice. Not everyone can hop on a bus to take them anywhere and everywhere. It's not even ideal since public transit isn't even reliable. I used to have to take the bus to go to my work, and at one point, the bus would come way later than scheduled. I'd come in late to my job, to which my bosses got pissed at me, and didn't give a damn that it was due to my public transit bus being late. "Take an earlier bus" they'd tell me, even though the earlier bus was more than an hour early (even then, it sometimes wouldn't come on time either). It's more time consuming, unreliable, requires cash, won't take you to every place at any time, and more. |
NJ is absolutely terrible with public transportation. In this state if you don't drive you're effectively a prisoner in your own home unless you've got someone wiling to do you a ton of favors.
Even when I'd just be trying to get a Lyft or an Uber, which were provided for me through insurance while I was doing my outpatient treatments a few years ago, they'd tell me upfront "Expect them to be an hour early or an hour late." Tell them that's not gonna cut it, because A. This is a medical appointment, and B. Afterwards I go straight to work, therefore "just be an hour late" isn't gonna work AT ALL... they just say "Well, that's the way it works. Explain it to your boss." Oh, I did... how well do you think he took it? Public trans is fine if you're in a city. Most of us don't have that luxury as an option. Quote:
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There are almost no Ubers/Lyfts around here and as "public transport" they required useless & dangerous mask wearing in order to use. Same for buses, taxis and trains none of which were running through where I live or exist. Buses were mostly down, same for taxis and there are no trains for passengers in the area. JoePedo is directly responsible for the EO from day one shutting down the pipeline as well as his EOs that shutdown US drilling & our self reliability for making fuel. This admin is making America more reliant on our ENEMIES... importing baby food? Importing other sh!t we should be making ourselves. America falls, so does the rest of the world. We cannot keep paying for everything by way of democrats writing EOs & sending money/arms to Ukraine. Fvck Joe Biden & his admin. Electric cars are a non-starter around here too. There are no charging stations and come winter, they'd be stuck pretty much in the driveway. Talked to a police officer who was given one for work. He can take it the 18 miles from his house to his job, leave it plugged in at work all day long & then take it home. He has no charging station at home. If he goes anywhere else, it dies on him in his driveway. And its not even cold out. They're verifiably terrible for the environment as well. Slave labor to dig out the contents of the batteries. Also, more dead kids cuz doing that sh!t is dangerous to their health because they get no protective gear... |
I feel really lucky to be working from home. I'd be pissed if I had to drive every day to get to a job that is barely covering the price of gas. That would have been me five years ago.
If any of you are dealing with that, you don't deserve it. |
My one buddy has a Tesla and he's on the road a lot. On average he spends an hour out of his day charging it. He swears it's awesome but to me that seems like a huge gigantic hassle. Like entire chunks of his daily life need to be scheduled around whether or not he can get to a charge station. Imagine telling someone you're gonna be 30+ minutes late to work because "I gotta stop and get gas"? They'll call you an irresponsible asshole with poor time management skills, and you'll be looking for another job in short order. But if you drive a Tesla and say you're gonna be 60+ minutes late for work because you need to 1. Find a charging station and 2. Sit there like a numbnuts until your car is sufficiently charged, it's "Oh, that's okay, just get here when you can." :roll:
I'm not up on the other Pros and Cons of electric cars, but as someone who's primarily motivated by self-interest I can say that I'm not interested purely due to the inconvenience factor. I'll be dead in 25-ish years, I could care less what happens to the planet after that. |
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I saw the signs of all of this coming a few months back and took a series of well adjusted financial steps.
I sold my Zl1 for a variety of reasons, none of which were that I couldn't afford it. Basically the used car market was/is on fire at the time and the car was blue booking for 60 grand. I had almost no loan left to pay on the car and I sold it for close to KBB, took the money and paid off a property. Doing this alleviated my mortgage, divested myself of the car while it had significant value and eliminated an insurance cost. All of that after I had ownership of the car for the last five years. So that was one step. Then a couple weeks ago I cashed in 100,000 Speedway points for $100 of gift cards at Depot. I used those in conjunction with credit card rewards cashback to reduce the cost on a new DeWalt battery powered mower. So now no more gas for grass and my old mower can reside at my rental property now. Next up is I begin lining up my shots to get one more year of use out of my daily driver (4 cylinder, AWD). By this time next year I should be in an electric vehicle outright without a car payment. Probably the Bolt unless I find a Tesla that I can't walk away from. You've got to see these patterns and start lining your shots up to grow financially and mitigate the costs you foresee being out of control. As for the upcoming food problems, the boss here and I are going to try our hands at growing some basic vegetables. I haven't had a garden of sorts since I was a kid with my parents. So it should be fun and maybe by the next few months I won't be buying Tomatoes, Cucumbers and I dunno whatever the other plant that she bought was. :lol: |
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Rodents and other wildlife get into them. Her own dogs dig up the gardens. In the winter here, it'll get too cold for any plant life to grow, and for the past two winters, she has had no more stuff growing in the garden patches. On top of that...if the chips are down, and sh*t hits the fan, her fence is small...and most people know (her garden is visible since we have chain link fences) she has a supply of food in her backyard. What do you think will happen? |
Honestly the only way gas prices affect me is when we plan a group trip to a con or something and I'm chipping in for gas, the amounts I'm chipping in have gone up, lol.
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And with that, I am also noticing poorer quality in food/goods as well. Lots more expired food than ever, for example. Clothes made from crappier materials. Shipping costs rising. That's just a few examples. |
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The next response could be "yeah but you were able to buy a ZL1 in the first place". But again, that's not because I'm independently wealthy - I'm not. It's because I chose to live by the patterns in the first place that led me to sell the car when the opportunity for it made sense. It's the same thing with the "pandemic collectibles insanity" when market prices were out of control. I didn't want to sell my Hulk 181 CGC 8.0, but the market commanded that I should. How did I get that book? I bought it for 385 bucks when I graduated college as a gift to myself years ago. I paid to have it pressed and slabbed and I held it for years. I sold it for 5k. What did I do that money then? I put the 5k into crypto in November 2020 and it turned into 28 grand. I took those profits. I'm not saying that it's easy but the fact is that I make the hard calls and stick to the plan rather than my ego for "things". :) Anyone can do it but most people don't have the balls or stomach for it. I think it's really important that I clarify that for the rest of the brain trust here. Not that my patterns are going to earn me any respect from the bottom feeders here, but you try anyway. You know. Quote:
As for some kind of food catastrophe and people stealing tomatoes? Yeah sure I believe that could happen, but if we get to that point then we have bigger problems that involve other issues than defending a plant with 30 tomatoes that I hoped to vac-seal, you know? Can't live on f'n tomatoes. I mean, even the theft of tomatoes is short sighted, but that's the majority of the peasant-level-population. Being a f'n peasant isn't about money. It's about the peasant-a$$-mentality. |
I wouldn't mind saving up for an electric car if there weren't so many uncertainties. Let's say I save up $60,000 for one, then the battery stops keeping a charge after a couple of years. Am I just screwed, then? Or in 5 years, there's a much improved electric car with better capacity... will I be able to sell my existing electric car for more than, say, $5000 at this point? Will I be able to sell it at all?
Then there's the thing about electric cars not being able to start in the cold. Yikes. |
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For example, here's my mental algebra for some of this decision.... consider: 01 Fuel costs, whether it be by conspiracy or nature, are high and given the Washington brain trust, they aren't ever going back down. There will be a new normal - like 4 something a gallon. 02 Trends - in 6 or 7 years most of the cars on the market will be electric. Again, you can like or hate it, it doesn't matter. It's happening. 03 Now do your head math - if you can put your hate for "the system" away do the head math. If in 6 or 7 years most cars will be electric, then your current gas powered car will have almost no trade in value. You'll be underwater and have to go into a new vehicle cold, or you'll be a luddite buying the last of the gas powered cars that you'll be stuck in for another 5 - 7 years now putting you firmly 12 or so years behind, stuck in a gas vehicle with diminishing support in a world with fewer gas stations where everyone is driving electric. Basically your hate for the system is screwing yourself. Don't be a peasant-ass thinker believing you'll be on your porch laughing at people driving by in their electric cars. You'll be there stuck on your porch laughing while everyone else is living their life. 04. Illustrated example of this - I said earlier I bought a battery lawnmower. The thing was expensive. I could've saved 300 bucks or so by buying the same lawn mower without the "power assist" where the wheels spin a bit on their own. But I spent more money to get the power assist. You know why? Because I kept the last lawn more I bought for like 15 years. And I'm not going to be a 60 year old man fighting his lawn more because I didn't buy power assist now even though I don't need it. You learn to look ahead reasonably. And something else to consider, brother. If you are convinced that I'm looking to be "saved" and that I'm dead meat, then all things in perspective that means that you are a goner for sure. Certainly if "they" get me, then you don't stand a chance. Something to consider to re-align your concerns. :) Quote:
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I think the problems we read about are frequently.... you know.... semi-singular problems but most people can't parse that out and it becomes "this HUGE problem". Like the "Summer of the Shark" in media years ago. Like "The racists are everywhere!" of the last few years. I think the most truthfully prolific problem I remember seeing in the last few years was that the original Chevy Bolt had some significant battery issue and they were blowing up and I think that was fairly widespread and real. |
But just about the battery. Like, I know that if I get a new phone it doesn't charge as well after a year or so. Then it starts charging fairly poorly. Luckily, I get a new phone every 1.5 years. What I do not get is a new car every 1.5 years. If that battery starts getting diminishing returns after 2 years or 4 years... I'm f***ed.
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But, there are other balances and benefits: -the tech will continue to improve and the fact is that people will buy the cars with the cheapest battery replacement which will force all competitors to improve this. -even if it's a cost wash, you save life and time and probably health by literally never having to go to a gas station. And so if I can buy an EV and spend the same amount of money on it over the life of the car as a gas car, then I'm still better off with the EV due to other externalities like the pollution, the interaction with fuel, the oil changes (which I do myself), etc. It's a rounded decision but most people who think they are thinkers simply go: "HA HA the battery will cost you as much as the gas HA HA!". Yet somehow they never see that other people are just slowly pulling ahead of them in life. On that note, I don't own an E.V. yet. My goal is next year - maybe even the Equinox which looks pretty great. |
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I guess it's better I did get a few gallons the other day, now the stations nearby are $4.99, too.
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Plus you have all those people who got stuck on the interstate last winter which brought up a good point that once its dead in that situation, it's dead. No one can try to bring you fuel to keep it going and warm or to get it started and off the road once its clear, so you're stuck with a costly tow service. I have nothing at all against electric cars, but feel those factors could be an issue, esp in certain places. They might be a better bet for areas that have mild winters. (Plus I'm a die hard Wrangler fan and won't be giving mine up unless it gets so old it can no longer be patched back together, but hopefully that won't be for a long time, or never in my lifetime.) |
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Know what I mean? |
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Buying a battery powered car is just another consumer option. But your POV on it is that it's the next "EEEEE-Villll". 35 years ago you'd have rallied against computers as the digital mark of the beast, but you're on one now espousing your interpretations of world events to those of us who will read 'em. If you are alive in 20 years you'll be in an all electric-powered environment and by proxy will have to give up on the argument that "going green will kill humans" and the next soapbox will be that nanites that cure disease are an injection from Satan. It never ends. That's circular thinking, brother. Try contiguous and linear logic instead. Even if you are compelled to vomit out some $#!( about my post here, at least quietly look up that chain of words I said there and try to figure out what I mean. Try contiguous and linear logic instead. :) Quote:
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I have always liked the smell of gasoline. I suppose I am kinda weird.
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There won't be a choice but to have electric cars in my country eventually, I think production of fuel cars will stop here in 2030, also new homes being built from a certain date will have to be built with charging ports (I think I read that right anyway)
As with the upcoming mandatory change to our home heating systems, the green versions cost more, in the thousands. I 'd also feel better about these things when these things are more established, teething problems dealt with, more parts and people experienced in maintainence etc. I think of all the cost of living rises the most noticable for me is home energy. I am paying more for petrol but lukily I don't clock up too many miles so it's not as bad as it is for some, I read it's set to go up again over here though. |
I could probably Google this, but is there any sense of how much charging your car up at your house overnight every night drives up the electric bill every month vs. what you'd ordinarily spend in gas?
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