How to Fight Rising Gas Prices

Like many people, I've experienced the increase in how much gas money it takes to get back and forth from my job each week. If you break it down by the hour, it works out to about 5 hours out of 40 each week just to pay for gas. That's significant, and it has made me pay attention to this issue more than I did a year or two ago.

Instead of letting the situation depress me or change my daily habits however, I've taken the situation as an opportunity to find even more ways to increase my income. Over the past 5 years, I've already found side businesses that have increased my income by about 30% each year. Internet-based businesses that operate themselves while you're working a day job are best, since after you get them off the ground you can start another one. I started working on these ideas long before there was any major rise in gas prices, but there's nothing stopping someone else from beginning today if they need extra money. It just takes time, research, and the willingness to work while other people are watching TV.

According to the type of business you start, you can even be saving people money in terms of having things shipped to them or getting them information they'd otherwise have to track down themselves. All of my businesses, from writing how-to articles to working with a company that sells non-perishable food online, have actually been doing better and better each month. From a personal standpoint, I'm seeing the financial side of being an employee go down while seeing my business income go up. I'm more balanced because I didn't "put all my eggs in one basket."

Full-time self-employment is also becoming more and more appealing by the day due to more tax advantages, as well as working at home in general. I seriously wonder if more companies over the next few years will begin offering working at home as an option, considering how much it could help both the employees and the companies. The work world and our culture are changing rapidly, and I do think gas prices could have some long-term impact on both if these trends continue.

As far as solutions to the gas prices, I would be in favor of domestic drilling as long as it was well supervised. I know enough about business that I don't consider oil companies "greedy" or "evil," realizing how much it takes to buy the initial barrels, ship it to here, process it, and include federal and state taxes. As a percentage, they're making a decent but not inflated profits-about 10% of the total price based on most of the figures I've seen. It honestly annoys me when the media quotes the gross profits of an oil company without explanation to the general public. That's misleading people about the cause of the problem, not realizing how much of that money is going toward taxes and foreign countries.

The overall root of the problem is the price foreign countries are initially charging us, knowing it's going to put people here in a hard position. It almost the same situation as a business monopoly in that if there's no competition, the source can charge whatever they want. Even increasing the oil we get from ourselves by a small percentage would make a big difference in prices long-term. Whether this will happen or not I think will depend on how much the public eventually gets frustrated.

I like many of the ideas people are coming up with as far as alternative fuels, and now there's actually more of a market for them than there was even 10 years ago. I'm optimistic that there are going to be better solutions that are created over time. Probably the most interesting I've heard involves recycling garbage, which results in a fuel that would roughly be $1 a gallon. Ten years from now we may look back on this situation and realize that a lot advancements came out of a time of pressure.

In the meantime, my husband and I are continuing to move forward in our own financial lives. We're paying down our debt by each working a job and developing as many side incomes as we can. We continue to tithe at church no matter what the circumstances. We have no children yet, but after about a year or two from today I am going to be able to "retire" in my late 20s and raise our future kids. It's not an easy thing to do, and the gas prices are kind of a speed bump in the process. It's worthwhile however, and if anything we're more determined than ever to change our finances for the better. In that respect, the gas prices have my attention, but they're not ruling our decisions.