Rising fuel cost

[socolais]

The rising cost of fuel is trickling through the supply chain and affecting the cost of most goods and services. Is it affecting your swinging decisions? Perhaps play closer to home or maybe play less often or better yet, have them do the traveling

[ktimephoenix]

No it hasn't affected us at all. i think that is probably because we don't have much debt, so our budget is pretty flexible.. we don't seem to be "swamped" like alot of people are.

[sexcupid]

Having my kids here for the summer puts a damper on our extracurricular activites...so far the gas prices just cause us to bitch a bit when it costs $50 to fill up my Eclipse.

Does that make me happy? No...but so far it hasn't put a damper on just hopping in the car and running around doing the stuff I want to go do. Once they go back to their dad's house, then it'll be game on again and then maybe we'll complain. lol

[LFM2]

I don't know if the cost of gas has directly affected our play time, but since I quit my job for school, that has forced us to live on one paycheck, therefore, we're pretty picky where we go and what we do. It costs us anywhere between $60-75 to fill up our vehicles and we're pretty rural, so we have to drive a ways to get anywhere.

[ktimephoenix]

makes me laugh when i read about you guys (Americans) bitching about the price of gas. i think sometimes you guys don't realise how lucky you've had it for so long.

My car is a small car, smaller than an eclipse, with a small fuel tank, and i WISH i could fill it for $50. those were the days.

last night i filled her up... $95 for a car smaller than an eclipse

[fun4Ds]

We are still doing o.k. but we haven't been going to far lately. We take Mrs.funs car over driving the truck now a days.

Probably be showing up on mopeds soon, if we have to

[rpu3]

Originally Posted by ktimephoenix

makes me laugh when i read about you guys (Americans) bitching about the price of gas.

Well, I'm not thrilled, but I rent cars and drive in Europe so it's a bit less of a shock. The trip to Germany last year had gas at $8.24 per gallon (I believe that includes the crappy exchange rate). But we bitch because we can. Believe me, someone in Quatar is probably bitching that his gas went up 10 cents to a whole 50 cents per gallon. It's just the way it is!

My spouse rides a motorcycle so that helps our gas bill a lot. Once I'm home, I'm not inclined to go out and if forced to go run errands, it's done as one big trip in a location that has most of what I need.

As to alternative activities, my spouse's friends are local so he just rides his bike. My friend is not - right now it's just "rotating" from a location in the middle, to closer to my side and next time it will be closer to his side. What else can you do? I'm not inclined to give that up - I'll just eat out less at work or budget better, I guess!

[JustAskJulie]

It hasn't affected us. We bitch a bit when we fill up. Although I bitch less now ... a few weeks ago we went by the local dealer and I checked to see whether it would be worthwhile to trade my car back in for a hybrid (I had a civic hybrid prior to this car), only to discover that it would take me 5 years of filling up to make up the difference I'd have to pay to get a hybrid again. So I decided that I'll keep my car and all the great amenities it has.

Oddly, the only thing it has really affected for me is that I'm less likely to wait in line at a drive-through (bank or food) and more likely to turn the car off and get out of and go in... which typically ends up saving me gas AND TIME (especially at the bank). We are still just as likely to jump in the car and drive to Nashville (which tacks on a hotel bill as well as a gas bill for swinging). Like someone else mentioned, we are debt-free and don't go if we can't pay cash.

[des1re06]

Yes it has. We've started car-pooling together, which I love. The diesel truck stays parked alot.

We also bought a small go-cart to get around in while we're camping.

We're only taking a short vacation this year to Vegas, instead of the 2-3 we normally would.

We use our camper instead of traveling to resorts.

I was truly po'd to pay almost $2.00 for 1 onion!!

Mrs. D

[Alura]

Our family of four has four cars and two motorcycles operational. We've been using the bikes a lot lately, particularly Sixteen who just began a part-time job. He rides the '79 Triumph Bonneville to work. (He's gotten really good at kick-starting it. ) Eighteen rides the '85 BMW R80RT when practical. Both bikes get around 50 MPG.

All vehicles are old and paid for and we have no credit card debt so we can manage the fuel costs although the prices piss me off because they could have been avoided, in my opinion. What's worse, the runaway inflation has spread into other costs of living. All of our utilities have gone up. Only insurance (and our house payments) have remained unchanged. That'll probably change when Farmers' agents demand more money so they can pay for their gas.

We try to plan routes that will get the most errands done with the least mileage.

Fuel costs haven't changed our swinging, which couldn't become less frequent. It may well limit our trips to Swingers Board Meet Ups, which is sad.

Fuel prices may well get lower as the changes wrought by them have an effect on our economy. We can only hope!

Mr. Alura

[two42lovers]

The way we play makes it pretty easy for us. Most of the time we invite friends over to our house. Even friends who have to drive to get here don't have it so bad - once they're here it's about as cheap as it gets. (No hotel needed - we have plenty of space. There's nothing like having friends at the beach when you are looking for a cheap get away -lol!) We have a well stocked bar, and putting out some finger food is pretty inexpensive. Add 5 or 6 couples, and let the fun begin. Cheap thrills!