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TOPIC: The New Gold

BUFWINGS

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Posts: 55

Date: Jul 16, 2008

The New Gold	Permalink

As quoted from one of Scott's columns The new gold ... Seems everyone this days is giving gas away as part of a promotional package. Buy a car, get free gas. Buy a boat. Get free gas. Buy a burrito, get gas. Well ... kind of. Anyway, people aren't interesting in money, jewelery, or even gold. Diamonds aren't a girls best friend any more. Give 'em gas. Even the Florida lottery has added gasoline to their list of prizes. A lottery spokesperson said, Once a week for the next two months, the second-prize winner in the latest lottery promotion, Summer Cash, will win free gasoline for life. And some people think that is a better deal than the games first prize, a quarter of a million dollars. Actually, they'll be getting a $100 gas card every other week for the remainder of their life. That's $50 free dollars in gas a week. Or just over 10 gallons. Not that grand of a prize, really. Especially since later this year it will be just under 10 gallons ... and will likely quickly diminish. Funny thing is, people don't notice that the value of the prize isn't nearly as good as the first place prize ... the quarter million dollars. They just hear free gas and go gaga. The price of gasoline, of course, makes up a little bit of the price of just about everything; the food we eat, the stuff we buy ... and of course the places we go. But keep in mind, it's only a portion of the cost of those things. With the price of gas at $4.20 a gallon, and assuming, 20 miles per gallon, it's 21 cents a mile. Or $101.01 to get from my home in Lockport to my favorite vacation destination, Washington, DC. Round trip makes it $200 (give or take). Two years ago, it would have only been $100 for gas for the same trip. Of course, while on vacation, you'd spend a bunch of money on a hotel, tourist attractions, trinkets, etc. Let's say $1,000. So add the gas in, and you've got a $1,200 vacation. As opposed to what would have been an $1,100 vacation if gas were $2.10. Are you really going to skip your vacation over $100? We need to stop treating gas as though it were gold. Otherwise, it might end up at $1,000 an ounce. And then we really couldn't afford to go anywhere. --------------- I totally agree with this!!! Here in Richmond, Virginia, gas has been hovering around the mid $3.80s. I hate paying almost $4 for a gas. HATE IT. And I have a gas friendly car. I hate how I drive about 80+ miles a day just to get to and from my job. But I'm not going to let the price of gas limit what I do on my free time. Lately I've been reading a lot of articles where people complain that the price of gas has forced them to cancel their vacations. I always wondered, "why?" I wondered for the same reason Scott did, are you really going to cancel your vacation over $100? The other week we went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for 10 days. The trip is a tank of gas each way and about a half a tank's worth of driving while we're there. I was going on that vacation, no way around it. So, I chose a different approach: instead of doing expensive activies every night after dinner, a few nights we went back to the condo and watched TV or hung out on our oceanfront balcony. That made up for the extra cost of gas. I realize the cost of gas has affected everyone in numerous ways but I think there are ways to work around it a little. We have to - we'll be dealing with this for awhile. __________________

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