High Gas Prices Force Us All to Scrimp Elsewhere

We ditched our landline and got VOIP service, which saves us about $80/month. 

I'm smarter about running errands, making better lists and traveling to the 'far away' (about 20 miles) club store only once a month instead of whenever I needed to - which saves money spent in the store, too, since I'm not spending more on impulse stuff "since I'm here". 

I could REALLY use a new vehicle, but ours have been paid off for 6 years, and we just can't get comfy with the idea of monthly car payments right now.  We may take the plunge in the Fall, as my youngest will be exiting pricey preschool and heading to public kindy - we can just roll his tuition into a car payment.  Not sure, though - it will depend on where the country is economically - if it's still suffering from the Obama Effect, I'll keep driving my Rodeo.

Yes, please, lets yet again blame only one President for this mess we are in. No one else, not us, not our last few presidents had anything at all to do with it. Maybe,just maybe if we as a whole were not living beyond our means to begin with, or writing checks we really could not pay on in a timely fashion, or hey,giving tax breaks to huge corporations like GE,we would not be in this mess to begin with. It took a really long time to get us in this pickle,and it'll take a long  time to get us out of it. This is everyone's fault. NOT just one persons. As a country we are so used to passing the buck,instead of owning our screw ups. No wonder we are losing our footing. As for this family, we reduced ourselves to one car 90% of the time,keeping it in working order for emergency uses. No land line. No more eating out(saved our waistlines too!) Trading off baby and kid clothes with other mommies,farmers markets. Saved on day care by bartering time within the parents we know, cooking in bulk and freezing for a "rainy day" and basically we stopped buying crap we didn't need. And as a community we started a garden. It's not much,but helps us out. If we really want out of this mess,the first step is to go back to the mentality hopefully we all were taught,of stop looking to place blame elsewhere,and acknowledge that we did it to  ourselves. We are suffering from keeping up with the Jones'.

Yes, please, lets yet again blame only one President for this mess we are in.

I'm not blaming him for the mess - I'm commenting on the fact that he's proven ineffective in making things better, seems determined to make things worse, and doesn't make me (or most people) feel confident that things will get any better while he's in office.

No one person can fix the mess we are in, in one term. If our congress, senate, and president, can't get their collective heads out of their asses, we are going to be in this mess for a lot longer than two terms. From what I've seen, he hasn't fixed it, but some of the measures he has attempted to put out there, the "hive" as I call it(which is both dems and reps) couldn't agree. The reps, dems, and libs, need to stop fighting, and start working together. We are killing our childrens futures with all this stupid fighting. I don't feel confident in our government period anymore. They and we are to darn busy fighting over body rights, who loves who, to figure out our educational system is shot to hell, our environment is being ruined, and our bank accounts are dry. (holy shit hoticed, I think this might be the first debate we have had without it getting ugly, kinda proud of us! Lol) The fatcats need to start paying their fair share. I think it's high time we the sinking middle class get a break, and the poor working class need it too.

 It's complete bs that obama didn't stand his ground and make these corps. pay their share, and it's bs the reps and dems couldn't agree to make that so. Frankly they all need to be fired and hire people that really are for the people and by the people. A pay cut to them wouldn't hurt either. There really is no reason for them to 140,000 or more a year. They are not teachers, firemen, policemen, or military. And last I checked, they were not finding the cure for cancer either. (drug co are a whole nother bag of worms!)

The fatcats need to start paying their fair share.

That right there is pretty much the beginning and end of my issue with The Left - relying on the income of the "rich" to enable Washington to spend us into unfathomable debt - is not an intelligent, logical, or safe ideology.  Just about every other issue falls to the side for me, because without a sound fiscal foundation, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS - not abortion/women's rights, gay rights, eldercare, clean energy, or whatever other flavor of the day. We will never succeed on the backs of the top 1%, ever, because once you start taxing those individuals so heavily that acheiving their level of success in the US becomes undesirable, the house of cards crumbles.

We can't keep justifying their tax breaks. We can't. They do need to start paying their share of taxes. Like with GE, they paid nothing. I don't see how you or anyone can justify the 1% in the US not paying taxes. And frankly,I don't ever want to be like them in the first place. How can anyone be considered a success off the blood,sweat and tears of others? If you can't understand why I as a lib say that these companies need to pay taxes and not get these crazy breaks,I can't help you. And frankly,we are not doing a very good job as a nation of succeeding off the backs of us lower classes. This country hasn't had a good fiscal foundation since before Reagan. And Reaganomics didn't work either. And those rights and clean energy,and elder care your willing to piss away, we need those things. I'm not willing to throw away those seniors that busted their asses for us! They deserve better! And we need to stop relying on oil. I'm sorry you took my statements and glossed over them. And I'm also sorry you seem to be so closed minded.

My mother taught me financial responsibility, so our budget is loose enough that an extra $80 a month in gas, even with the requisite increase in prices for pretty much everything else, isn't an issue. We still go to town about every night (25 miles round trip), and go shopping every weekend (even if we don't usually spend more than $10-20, and the closest city is 80 miles round trip) and drive our (older, paid off) not exactly economical small truck and suv. Yeah, I'd like a more economical vehicle so we weren't spending so much on gas, but the car payments would outweigh the savings so it's not worth it to us yet. If we were that worried about it we'd subscribe to Netflix and cut out our nightly run to Redbox, which would save about $50 a week on gas. Although, if we were spending that much less every week maybe I could justify to myself the purchase of a nice new led tv...

I don't see how you or anyone can justify the 1% in the US not paying taxes.

The 1% didn't get us into this mess.  The 1% isn't the keeper of the nation, the payer of bills, the leveler of the playfield, or the ones responsible for bailing out and enabling wasteful, bloated government.  I don't have any problem with GE paying taxes.  Get them out of Obama's pocket and close the tax loop holes that allow them to do what they did.  I have a huge problem with burdening individual tax payers with even more pocket-raiding that is already going on.  Not my vote.

I couldn't have laughed harder when you claimed an inability to help me.  See....that's YOUR mentality, that people need to be helped - it's part of Terminal Liberalism - the notion that anyone outside the tribe just needs help getting into that victim mentality.  People don't disagree over lack of understanding - we (Conservatives) understand completely - and that's what forms the basis of our disagreement with Democratic Ideology.   We're not waiting for someone with deep pockets to make it all better, we're waiting for someone with a brain and simple accounting skills to take over the reigns.  Your confession that you 'wouldn't want to be like them (the rich)' is beyond telling  for a Liberal - you want the rich to save the nation, but reserve the right to be disgusted by their ability to succeed.  Impressive in both it's entitlement and arrogance.