Trim the Fat Tuesday: The Gas Budget

We are always looking for ways to use less gasoline in the cars. As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to accomplish that. You can drive more slowly, or you can drive less often. We've dabbled in each of those areas during the Trim the Fat Tuesday project, but now we're going all in on the driving-less-often concept. Starting this month, Kirk is going to

Walk to work instead of driving.

This has been made possible by his new job in town, which is just a five-minute walk around the corner. The hospital is just behind our back fence:

It turns out that you can now see our garden from space, so if you're looking carefully, you can see just how close we are to the hospital. So close, in fact, that it's not even worth taking the bike out of the garage to get there.

His old commute, on the other hand, was 22 miles each way, five days a week. In dollars and cents, that added up to about $160 per month in gas. Occasionally he would ride his bike as part of a triathlon training regimen, but it was never practical to try on a regular basis.

Now, though, we can bank all that extra gas money that we no longer need. And that's a big boost to our bottom line as well as to Kirk's quality of life quotient — commuting sucks!

Savings per month: $160