Keeping up with the Joneses, gasoline-guzzler style!

Along the same lines as my previous post, I also keep track of my consumption of gasoline. As I discussed earlier, giving up my car is not an option for me at this point in time. Therefore, I consume gasoline like an American--as long as I can pay for it, I will keep driving. In tallying up my statistics, I was surprised to find that from July 8, 2008 to July 7, 2009, I bought 351.42 gallons of gasoline. Adding in my carpooling opportunities, I consumed an estimated total of 354.92 gallons. Surprisingly, this is down just over 22 gallons from the year before.

While I am nowhere near the Riot 4 Austerity goal of 50 gallons of gasoline for the entire year, I consumed 71% of average. Not great but I improved over last year. To what do I attribute this difference? I suspect part of the reason is my twice monthly work-at-home (telecommute) day. Based on the mileage to work and my car's average mpg, I should have saved about 26 gallons. That is close to my actually gallon savings.

To fill out my numbers game, I tallied my mileage over this same period (9,638.8 miles) and divided by the gasoline consumed by my car to yield a 27.4 mpg over the last 12 months. I thought I calculated closer to 28 mpg last time so I was disappointed that I lost some ground. Still, that means in August 2011, I will reach the average mileage lifetime for my car if I am still driving it. Here is hoping I can make it to 150,000 miles!