esrosedotblog

WSJ?OTD

"Does the price of gasoline affect your driving habits?"

NO

First of all, I don't think that we drive that much so it is not a big part of our expenses.

We did change down from premium grade.

Despite all data to the contrary, I have always been a premium gas buyer.

It goes back to the old Mobil ad that showed a washer with stuff in it. The implication being that it cleaned your engine.

Sucker!

But, even knowing that I was being taken, we continued to use premium grade even in the years that we commuted a lot.

I think that I used premium when I rented a car!

Now I know that it was not about performance at all. I bought premium because I could. It was a marker of our affluence.

I didn't do a lot of that. Well, yes I did. We were golden for awhile and painted ourselves with it.

No regrets.

If you got it, flaunt it!

The trick is to know when to quit flaunting because you won't always have it.

What goes up always comes down.

When we lived in Boston, we could have gone without a car if I had not commuted (backward) to our offices in Hanover.

We could have walked or taken the T to almost any location we wanted to. For a long time I had groceries and other stuff delivered because it was easier than taking a car where I could walk just as well.

But here we would be stranded without driving ourselves. There are cabs and they are cheap but that would be crazy.

We don't do recreational driving. We go where we need to go when we need to do it.

Did I mention that we have three cars? None of them gas guzzlers, incidentally.

But that is another question.

The other respondents in this survey said that the price of gasoliine did affect their driving habits 55% to 45%.