Can people not do math anymore?
 

It kills me hearing about what people are doing to "save money" on gas. There are constant new posts on other forums I visit (dirt bike and Jeep related) with people buying a second car with better mileage to save on gas. :confused:

Some primo examples

• One guy "couldn't afford to fill his truck anymore", so he bought a brand new Tacoma 4x4 for a daily driver, keeping the 1 ton for towing duties. How many miles will it take for a $28,000 20mpg truck to pay for itself vs a 12 mpg truck?
• One of my riding buddies works at a car dealership. A few weeks ago a guy came in saying he couldn't afford to keep gas in his truck. His truck was brand new (under 3000 miles) and cost him ~$34K. He got $18K for trade in. I can't imagine the number of miles he'll have to drive to make up for eating $16,000 in one month!
• And there are the endless threads that go like this - "I put a header/highflow cat/cat back, cold air intake, magic spark plugs, and a flux capacitor on my 6" lifted Jeep with 37" Swampers and 1,100 lbs worth of skid plates and bumpers and lights. Now I get 13mpg instead of 11mpg, and it only cost $2K." Or something along those lines.
• I know some people back in Michigan that will drive 40+ miles round trip to Walmart to save 10 cents a gallon on gas. And in doing so they probably burn 1.5-2 gallons. I caught some grief at home, because I won't do a 15 mile round trip to go where gas is a dime cheaper. Let see, burn a gallon of gas to save $1.40 on a fillup......hmmmmm

I just don't get people. Do they need to borrow a calculator? I don't care if people modify or swap cars, but do some math before claiming you did it to save money.

Heck, when I got my Jeep I had a paid-off 98 S-10 that rarely saw anything outside of the 28-30 mpg range. I sat down and punched the numbers. If I never ever drove my new Jeep the S-10 would save me almost enough money to cover the insurance on itself, not to mention maintanace, licensing, etc. So for sale it went. (Now, 3 years later, I am sure the S10 would have earned it's keep).

I just needed to vent. I can't go 5 minutes anywhere without hearing someone complain about gas prices, whether at work, on the internet, watching TV, or standing in line at the hardware store.

The short answer ............................ No they can not do the math.

adam728 -

I have come a long way since 1989. I have owned 2 new cars in my lifetime, a black 1989 CRX DX and a white 1997 Saturn SC2 coupe. Back then I could *afford* to make the payments. Today, I could take on a new car payment on a compact car if I really had to, but every fiber in my body screams NOOOOOO, DON'T DOOOO EEEEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the "old daze" my Dad was used to getting a new car every 3 years. That was the American way. I think the instinct prevails even though the "disposable income" ain't there anymore.

PS - I think the "flux capacitor" dude (back to the future) might be pulling your leg.

CarloSW2

I bought an additional car that was under $1000. I drive my own vehicles for a living. My story I would say is very different. The roads out here (potholes, constant construction new housing) destroy modified suspensions. My other car is lowered on high spring rate coilovers. I added another car for 50/50 mileage and saving wear on the car i still am making payments on. You got it tho, you can spend 8.00 a gallon on gas keeping a truck stock and still save money compared to the people who dropped 5 grand at the 4x4 speed shop. There is more to life than gas mileage, so if you choose to "live" dont ***** about the price of the fuel. I complain too, but i finish the sentence with "but this is what im trying to do about it."

No, they can't do the math. I've said it repeatedly that the cost of fuel for most people is emotional more than anything else. People have no problem spending insane amounts of money on coffee, lunch and designer crap, but gas freaks them out.

My cousin tools around in a Toyota 4Runner and is the first to whine about gas prices. I asked him why he needs such a big vehicle when he tows nothing and rarely has passengers, and he says because he likes trucks, and to sit up high. I told him to buy a smaller car and his response was "Why should I have to? This isn't a 3rd world country, this is America!" Well in America, you can have whatever you want as long as you can pay for it. Cheap gas is not a right! He was even toying with the idea of buying a moped to get around, and keeping the 4Runner! I told him he wouldn't save a dime unless he got rid of the 4Runner. He insists he would, despite still having to make payments on the Toyota, keeping it insured and serviced etc. Since motorcycles aren't practical as a person's only means of transportation, he would never be able to use one to save money, not to mention that the safety risk isn't worth it for most people. I think he needs a calculator too!

Despite the fact that my four banger is EPA rated 21/30 (new ratings), it doesn't make sense for me to sell it for another car. I'm constantly considering which car will be my next (right now I'm interested in the 00+ 5spd Civic HX), but I'm not going to buy anything until either my Chevy suffers a catastrophic failure, is involved in a serious collision or gas hits two digits. To me, green is the stuff in my wallet. Payback period is king.

I think the OP threw in the flux capacitor thing for comedic effect. I'm pretty sure he knows what it is. :)

Yea, I just threw that in there. It wasn't actually supposed to quote someone, just a generic idea of what gets posted on a nearly daily basis about how to save money on gas on Jeep forums. Yup, plunk down 4 digit numbers of cash to save a few dollars a month. When someone asks about improving Jeep mpg they either get "It's a Jeep, who cares?!", or suggestions on everything from a $500 exhaust system to full engine swaps.

I haven't heard too much of people trading in their trucks for new vehicles. But, I have heard of some buying beaters that get good FE such as a Civic and then making up the money they paid for it in savings of gas bills.

As for an exhaust system, it could be more of an enthusiast thing with the extra benefit of good FE. "Hey, I've wanted a nice throaty exhaust system for a while now. I know it will eventually pay for itself (in about 2-3 years of driving*) and I get to add something to my mod list." This is especially worth it if the stock exhaust is not doing its job anymore and needs replacement anyways.

Although, I do agree that buying a new car or tons of money into the existing car just for FE is not a good investment.

*12,000 miles/year
previous FE: 22 MPG
after exaust: 24 MPG
$4.00/gallon of fuel
$500 cat-back exhaust
______________________

2.77 Years till payoff and "X" years of deep throaty driving fun.

My next favorite one is; "41mpg eh, not bad, but i'm happy getting 36 mpg now in my 300 and I drive 80mph on the hwy."

Now you know their freakin lying, I've started to call them out and ask them how many miules they get to a tank, to which they respond, I don't know. So how do you know you're getting 36mpg? Because I am ...

I don't worry, because in the end I will have the disposable income to do whatever I want while those around *****, moan & eat noodles to keep their SUV's idling in their front yard for 20 minutes while they finish a cell phone conversation.

Funny, "41mpg eh, not bad" is almost the exact response I got talking to another Matrix owner at work when I told him I got 43 over the weekend and he got 32 (we both went on road trips).

This is just the latest version of that old joke...
 

Everyone is at a faculty meeting. The proposed department budget of 42 Million dollars passes unanimously with no comment, even though most of the people there have no idea what it contains.

The attendees then argue for 45 minutes about whether or not the department should be paying for a box of doughnuts for the meeting.

For some people, the price of gas is like the doughnuts, and the car(s) they buy are the department budget.

Hahaha! I love this thread. I deal with these types of people every day. The people I work with buy cars for some of the same stupid reasons mentioned by you guys, above. I know people who will drive across town to eat at a cheaper restaurant and save $4. Even my mother-in-law keeps a second refrigerator running year round so that she can save $2 per month on meat by buying it in bulk.

This is a good thread. It kind of makes me want to evaluate every money saving technique I use. :)

I considered buying a laserjet to replace my inkjet since the cost per sheet is notoriously lower. For a new printer at $99, even when considering toner refill/rebuilt cartridges, it would have taken 16,000 pages to break even. If I had considered a used printer or sold the old one, the break even point would be much lower at the cost of greater risk.

I stayed put. Going through the numbers makes me wish I would have bought wisely in the first place...

Any other experiences?

- LostCause

aren't y'all forgetting the hobby factor? while the initial motivation may have been savings on gas... spending money in an attempt to achieve marginal results is sort of the definition of a hobby (especially when it comes to cars) no? just look at the folks who dump tons of cash into their rocket-cars. rarely will they ever be able to take advantage of their performance equipment... but they do it because they enjoy the hobby of it.

same can be said of ecomodding.

jmho though.

Thats a good point SirKeats. I think a lot of us here are a bit more willing to throw down money to get better mileage and that money may never come back in the form of cash. However, it is still paying for other things like reducing dependance on foreign oil sources and helping out the environment. Money isn't the only motivation for some of us.

However, I'd still agree that a lot of people make bad decisions simply because they don't think it out.

I am willing to throw down some money to improve FE but not enormous amounts. If I was to do that I would just go out and buy a more effcient car.I have done other things to be more "green".

I have gotten my mom to start recyling, we started 3 months ago and every week we put out 3 large bins of recyclables plus two or three milk crates full of them. I've gotten a family of 5 down to one bag of trash from 4-5 a week. Plus all of the lights are now CFL's and we leave the windows open more.

I see vehicle swapping here at work, but the kind of swap depends on where they're parked.

The execs and sales guys park at the entrance and they seem to have gone from Mercedes and BMW SUVs and Cadillacs to Audi coups and Lexus sedans. Some real money saving happening there :rolleyes:

The rest of us park behind the warehouse and loading docks. I see far fewer Jeeps and pickups and more compact and midsize cars. One of the guys on my bowling team gave his ailing 90's grand prix to one of our mechanics to replace his 2 ton pickup as a commuter car and picked up a Hyundai for himself.

I know quite a few people who would drive 30 minutes to save $0.10 and no, they can't do math.

SirKeats -

That's my POV egg-zactly. I have turned my nightmare commute into a hobby.

My friend was telling me how he wanted to drop $4,000 on a Turbo. That would gain him what, 2+ seconds on the 0-60? Me no care. Him speed caveman. Me MPG caveman.

We like to take turns making each other's eyes glaze over when it comes to our car interests, :D .

CarloSW2

Since gas hit $3.00 a gallon I gave up my original hobby, building show cars, for this one, saving gas.

I must say, it isn't until now that I realized that I dumped nearly $40K into a $15K car for what? I have the title of 3rd best xB in the country as per Scion. A title ... Now don't get me wrong, getting there was fun, but it was money flushed away into a vehicle that I am going to be burried in.

Whereas now I am investing money into the Vibe, by far not as much and it is saving me tangible amounts of money. Even my wife enjoys this new hobby because of the savings and who knows, if I blabber my mouth off to enough people I may one day use the gathered knowledge here to develop a job that will definately pay the bills ... BOOYA !!

But still I caught my wife asking me why don't we sell the V8 SUV for a new Camry Hybrid or Prius. I responded with; Because they cost $8K more than what we paid for this vehicle when it was new ... Reality quickly sunk in ..

trikkonceptz -

I think all of the aero-mods cross over into performance and/or trucker MPG savings. Real mods, not the ricer-bling ones, will serve you well down the line.

CarloSW2

Get one out of the trash that works. I road my bike/trailer around on large item day until I found one that looked good and took it home. It worked but sadly it needed a $30 part to work well. I chucked it but forgot to save the cartridge for office printer:eek:

Thats interesting. I wonder if the "fast car" magazines etc. are modding (or beginning to) for aero in an mpg way? And they largely do a tidy job with their mods, apart from the garish graphics etc.!!

ollie

Yes all the car enthusiast mags should get some "3 mpg and 30hp for $300" packages going. Items over a $300 tag usually won't pay for themselves in mpg's. Id limit big purchases to smarter wheel/tires and maybe body kit items. However the simple mods that can be taken from vehicle to vehicle are what I'm toying with and of highest priority now, because my car is ass ugly and I'll never love it :)

One phrase to own them all.

"Some people's children."

I was at a local Giant Eagle grocery store wanting to get some stamps and there was a really old guy in front of me saying that when he got home, he checked his receipt and found out that he was overcharged for a product and he drove all the way back from the other side of town to get a refund.

I looked on the register when he got his refund and it said $0.61
When I got out of the store, I seen him getting into his Buick Roadmaster happy about his savings.

I've noticed more small & medium sized cars on the road lately, but I've also noticed that the driving habits of the people behind the wheel haven't changed a bit. So, I've come to this conclusion...
People are not saving gas, they're just driving cars that get better mileage.

^I'd have to disagree with you there. I see more people coasting to a red stop light and less people getting frustrated when they are stuck behind me coasting to a red light. I remember around winter time, almost every time I coasted to a red light, the person behind me would gesture or even cut me off on the way to the light :crazy:. I'm not making this up, I've had people cut me off because I was coasting to a red light. (This means they have to accelerate like crazy and then brake right afterwards.) But I didn't mind because that just gave me someone to semi-draft off of.

I work at a grocery/gas store on the weekends and the same person will come in and out 3-5 times a day not even thinking about how much gas they could have saved by just coming once and getting all of their groceries/cigs at the same time.

So not only do people not do math, but some don't even think. Then they come in complaining about gas prices.

I bought a high mileage car in 2006 when I knew my commute was going to stay at 90 miles a day, round trip, and my 22 mpg car reached 130,000 miles. I did a spreadsheet for the top ten cars I considered, calculated mileage at an "outrageous" $3 per gallon and came up with a short list of three cars.

But in the end, my decision was not just based on dollar savings; a major factor was the comparable comfort of the cars, knowing that I would spend up to 10% of my time behind the wheel each day. So while I average 49 MPG week after week, I could have still been "money ahead" ... even at the $4.24 per gallon I paid yesterday ... if I had gone with the cheapest, but lower mileage car on my list.

Besides bad math skills, there are other intangibles: justifying a new purchase to the "Finance Committee", for instance.

I thought this was going to be one of those I bought something after it was rang up 13.01, then I gave them a penny after the fact and they went crosseyed and started counting fingers and toes ;)

I calculate the price of a 24 pack cvs a 12 pack of Dr Pepper to make sure the more I buy is actually a better deal..

I'm silly, SILLY like that!

I was doing 53mph on the freeway, nobody but one trucker got fustraited and hit the horn, of couse I honked back, but it was weak in compairison..

The compressor, tank and train horns are in the works ;)

I can't really say anything as I'm guilty as charged when it comes to not thinking about the "actual" cost of something when I get it. For instance, recently, I've been wanting to get either A: a more fuel efficient car so my mpg will go up on my car, or B: a moped so that I can have something to do the majority of my driving on instead of the 4 door sedan I currently have. I never really considered how much I would have to drive it, or use it, etc. to hit the break even point. But I think that more goes into the "hobby" factor that was referred to early. Conserving gas has become such a compulsive habit or mine that it's almost turned from interest, to hobby and now into an obsession with emotional attachments. I'm not going to lie, saving fuel is addicting and I would almost think about spending a little extra unnecessarily to save a few extra mpg...maybe not $2k on all that fancy wizardry you mentioned, but I will certainly spend a few hundred dollars on aero improvements and materials to improve FE and reduce weight on my vehicle.

But after reading your post it did open my eyes to what I have done in the past and I think from now on before making any kind of purchase for the sake of "saving money" I'm going to evaluate if I truly do save by doing it or if it's just in my head because of what corporate America has brain washed me to think.

I was at a car show the other night. There was a guy there that had a train horn setup off a conrail in front of his radiator. He hit that thing and I swear every single person in that parking lot jumped at the same time. There was a small kid maybe 5 years old at the most that started crying. I want one so bad.

I almost took the horn out of an ambulance I found at the local junk yard a few years ago. I wonder if it's still there...