2007 versus 2008

I am actually spending less on gas this year than last year, in spite of gas being much more expensive. About $15 bucks less a month on average, though gas is nearly $.70 more per gallon. I guess I have changed my habits in some manner. I wish I was running my incredibly boring, but becoming more verbose blog last year in order to see what I am doing differently and replicate it only more so.

I know $15 isn’t a lot, but when you consider the price difference, it is somewhat significant. I will be curious to see what happens when my commute is 2.3 miles (about 6-7 minutes in town driving) instead of 11.1 miles (about 20 minutes in good traffic, a clusterfuck in bad traffic*). I’m also considering biking it to work. I figure I could use the exercise.

I’ve also clearly become more selfish, as I’ve spent about $200 more on entertainment this year than the same period last year and literally twice as much on shopping, but about half as much on gifts as last year. My spending is absolutely out of control this year.

I need to come up with a new spending strategy, because not having one at all has turned out to be terribly costly, and as I have said before, I need to kill off these student loans as the economy is unlikely to be puppies and flowers any time soon.

*Traffic is always mysteriously bad southbound on I-5 from North Gate and onto the Ship Canal Bridge. I refuse to believe that there is a constant stream of southbound traffic that never goes north again. There is clearly something wrong with the engineering of southbound I-5 through that area. Something is not properly designed, because I sincerely doubt that there is a steady stream of refugees from Canada sneaking continually southward to Mexico in American vehicles.