Gas – I drive about 4000 miles a year in a truck that gets about 16 MPG. Joni drives about 17,000 miles a year in a van that gets an average of about 18 MPG. Together that means that we burn about 250 gallons of gas in my truck, and about 950 gallons of gas in Joni’s truck. That means we burn about 1200 gallons of gas per year. At $4.00 that means we spend about $4800 on gas per year. A year ago we were spending about $2400 on gas per year.

I would say our electric bill has gone up by about $800/year, and our monthly expenses have gone up about $1800 per year because the price of gas has caused everything to go up in price. Add it all together and we spend about $5000 more than we did last year on the same type of things that we bought last year.

Assuming that you have the same position this year that you had last year, it takes $5000 to $7000 more this year than last year to meet the same expenses. In my case, I make more than that amount this year than I did last year because I was given a significant promotion in my job. In other people’s cases they may work for a company that was not able to give cost of living raises to their employees, or even worse, some people had cutbacks or even layoffs.

You can say that I might be trying to rationalize my decision to not cut back on my travel, but life is short. There is too much USA, and too much Earth, to see and not enough years in our lives. I consider travel and vacations to be a crucial element to keeping a person’s life style. I personally would put off buying a new car for a couple of years before I would cancel my normal vacation plans.

My father was a wise man. When we were children he told me that he could not give me a million dollars, but he could try to give me the world. When dad passed away I had seen 48-states and been to 7 foreign countries. Heather is now 13-years-old and she has been to 26 states, and 3 foreign countries. I’m not keeping pace with what my father gave me, but I’m close. Travel is important, and in my house it is not considered a luxury, it is considered part of the human experience.

I might have to find other places to cut back, but travel and education are two places where I refuse to cut.