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ziactrice posted recently the question, "What would you change if gasoline was $5-6 a gallon?"
I use 20-25 gallons a month of gasoline, so a $1.50-2.50 increase would mean $30-63 extra. That's quite workable in my budget.
So, the scary thought I had was this-- $6 a gallon gasoline is no longer scary and unrealistic to me. ($10, now, that's the stuff of nightmares.)
I also had the fun thought experiment of figuring out (a)how few hours a week I could keep up my current standard of living on, and (b)whether I could reduce those by one or more days per week if I could save that on the grocery bill by spending those days making my own food instead (which is fun for me anyways).
The sad answers are (a) not more than a couple hours less than I have now;
(b) probably not, even considering that it takes me about 3/4 of a gallon of gas to make a round trip to work, so if I skipped a day of work I could skip $3 or so in costs.
About 25% of my current budget is food costs. I may at some point start spreadsheeting the cost of groceries by food group and figure out if there's somewhere I can switch to a cheaper healthy alternative, but other than that, I think I'm about stuck.
I am also seeking suggestions on a nice descriptive tag for this kind of "I'ma go buy me some property and bake my own bread and raise my own food and threaten to shoot trespassing Southern-hating Yankees for meat* and distill corn for liquor and tractor fuel" maundering, in case the tag below doesn't quite fit.
*I wouldn't really shoot any Yankees. I'd just inform them that the center of the country was not really a sucking black hole, but in fact they had been eating the good food grown and raised there for much of their coastal lives, and watch them fall over in shock**.
**Unlike cow-tipping, this probably does actually work.
ziactrice posted recently the question, "What would you change if gasoline was $5-6 a gallon?"I use 20-25 gallons a month of gasoline, so a $1.50-2.50 increase would mean $30-63 extra. That's quite workable in my budget.
So, the scary thought I had was this-- $6 a gallon gasoline is no longer scary and unrealistic to me. ($10, now, that's the stuff of nightmares.)
I also had the fun thought experiment of figuring out (a)how few hours a week I could keep up my current standard of living on, and (b)whether I could reduce those by one or more days per week if I could save that on the grocery bill by spending those days making my own food instead (which is fun for me anyways).
The sad answers are (a) not more than a couple hours less than I have now;
(b) probably not, even considering that it takes me about 3/4 of a gallon of gas to make a round trip to work, so if I skipped a day of work I could skip $3 or so in costs.
About 25% of my current budget is food costs. I may at some point start spreadsheeting the cost of groceries by food group and figure out if there's somewhere I can switch to a cheaper healthy alternative, but other than that, I think I'm about stuck.
I am also seeking suggestions on a nice descriptive tag for this kind of "I'ma go buy me some property and bake my own bread and raise my own food and threaten to shoot trespassing Southern-hating Yankees for meat* and distill corn for liquor and tractor fuel" maundering, in case the tag below doesn't quite fit.
*I wouldn't really shoot any Yankees. I'd just inform them that the center of the country was not really a sucking black hole, but in fact they had been eating the good food grown and raised there for much of their coastal lives, and watch them fall over in shock**.
**Unlike cow-tipping, this probably does actually work.
