I’ve about had it with gasoline companies. The prices change daily and nobody is very clear as to why that has to be. I suspect it has more to do with price fixing, gouging, and generally being nasty to the public than it has with supply and demand.

When prices are this variable, to say nothing of being this high, I start to think about ways I can manage my money when it comes to buying fuel. I often times will drive on an empty tank using the range metric from the cars computer as a gauge to determine when I should buy fuel or not. Last night while driving home from the gym it struck me. I allocate $40 a week to gasoline in my budget and I can make it from week to week quite well on that money. Instead of buying fuel in one $40 transaction which today would only really get me three quarters of a full tank from empty I have decided that I am going to buy gasoline in $8 increments. That gives me five opportunities to fuel until I hit my budget cap. So, the last time I fueled, which was last night, I bought $8 worth of gasoline. That won me about 100 miles in the range metric, but since I refuel around 30 miles on that metric it’s actually about 70 miles. Of course the metric is based on a LOT of highway driving so the minute I go back to city driving the MPG will drop through the floor and this mythical 70 miles worth of gasoline per stop will actually turn out to be around 30-40 miles.

With this plan, I don’t have to feel like I got gypped by the variability in gasoline prices. I don’t care about credit card transaction fees on small purchases hurting the vendor. I lack sympathy for the devil.