Travel Blog

There are lots of tools available on the web to help you do gas price comparison. They are available  in virtually every city across North America. We all need help these days with the price of gasoline going up so much.

One tool I use is called “Gas Buddy” which will show you the latest gas prices. It will tell you what gasoline is being sold for in the area nearest you. They rely on local people inputting to the web site to keep the prices up to date. They provide an excellent service to the public.

Gas Price Comparison

When you compare prices in this manner it quickly becomes clear that the prices really do not vary that much. You may find that the price will vary by a few cents per gallon or liter depending on were you live. The government has never been able to prove price fixing for the price of gasoline. But it is pretty obvious when the price of gas is virtually the same just about every were.

The only difference seems to be from the difference in taxes when you go from one state to the next. Some service stations will price their gas a little higher if there is no local competition. They claim shipping costs, but it is really because they can get away with it.

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Gas prices continue to rise, hitting $3.90 in the last week of March. for some reason the people in the United States are not saying much about it. although the news people dutifully report the daily increases, it does not seem to get much traction. There are just too many other stories around that have more interest than rising gas prices. Which has been going on now for over 3 months. All I know is that it has probably added $200 to the cost of my vacation this year! That is a direct cost since we tend to go on driving vacations.

Anyone traveling via plane will see a jump as well. Of course all of our food costs are going to increase as well. With all of the truckers on the road, and the cost of diesel going up, food prices are going to increase as well. So why is the US consumer not complaining more. Or have we just given up and are accepting what is going to be the inevitable. Higher prices for gasoline are here to stay!

Why is the US Consumer so Ambivalent

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Rising Gas Prices Affecting Your Vacation Plans

For many of us we are thinking of our summer vacation coming up and wondering if high gas prices will have a negative impact on those plans. Gas prices have increased over 20% in the past few months and there are rumors that prices will go even higher. So how much will your vacation budget need to increase to handle the increase in prices for gasoline if you are going on a driving vacation?

Rising Gas Prices Affecting Your Vacation Plans – Impact on Your Vacation

Let’s assume you are going to drive a 1000 miles on your vacation. Half on the way to your destination and half on the way back. This represents a nice round number and may be short for some people and too long for others. Either way you can prorate the numbers to get a feel for your own cost. In order to understand the cost difference we have to make a number of additional assumptions. Each of these assumptions will be somewhat conservative and you may need to adjust them to match your own vehicle and the price of gasoline in your state.

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Exploding Gas Prices

Once again oil prices are on the rise just in time for the summer vacation in North America and Europe. It feels as if this is a plot against anyone who wants to take a driving vacation. Or fly somewhere for their summer vacation. Anyone who drives to work has already felt the pinch of gasoline prices. They have gone up as much as 20% in the last few months. We are currently on a driving trip across the country. I was wondering just how much the increasing gas prices were going to affect our trip.

Well it turns out that if you take the average price of gas at the time of writing this post as $3.63 and compare it to the price of gasoline at the pump at Christmas time, which was an average of $2.98; our trip is going to cost roughly $200 more in gasoline alone.

Impact of Rising Gas Prices on Our Standard of Living

While this amount is not as much as I expected for a 6000 mile trip, it still adds up when you take into account the other things that also go up at the same time due to increasing prices for gasoline and diesel. When you are travelling across country you begin to realize how large the country really is and also how many trucks there are on the roads. There are literally thousands of them on the road and you begin to realize that much of the fruits and vegetables we enjoy are carried by these trucks. When the cost of diesel goes up so do the prices of our vegetables, the products we purchase and virtually the cost of everything we consume is affected.

We all take a hit on our standard of living when gas prices increase. If you spend it more of your money on filling up the car, there is less money for other things. If everything is going up, inflation begins to raise it’s ugly head and we all fall further behind when it comes to enjoying the quality of life that we are used to. There really is no choice, you either get a raise or you cut back and guess what we have another recession!

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