How much do you spend on gas over a 12 month period? If you know, you are unusual. As the price of gas increases so has your yearly gasoline cost. Gasoline has become one of the major components of your family budget. In order to maintain a proper family budget you really need to know how much you are spending for gas during the year. Most drivers are familiar with the amount of money it costs to fill the car but few can state with certainty the total spent per year.

It is easy to figure out and only takes a few minutes. That being the case one would think that most drivers would take the time to work the calculations and determine their annual expense. But most don’t. If they did they might realize how important it is to their financial health to do something about it.

Almost every day, we see the increases to the price of gas. $3.00, $3.19, $3.39 per gallon, even $3.49 and $3.59 per gallon are costs that we have seen this year. Not long ago $3.00 for a gallon of fuel seemed high. Now $3.00 looks like a bargain.

The American Automobile Association uses 15,000 miles as an average amount of miles traveled per vehicle when they calculate costs. If you on average travel 15,000 miles a year in a vehicle that runs at about 20 miles to the gallon, you will purchase around 750 gallons of gasoline per year. If the price is $3.00 per gallon that equals $2250.00 per year.

If you are part of a two vehicle household and both vehicles average 15,000 miles per year you will use 1500 gallons of fuel annually. 1500 gallons at a pump price of $3.00 per gallon is an expense of $4500.00 per year.

Of course if the price of gas is $3.49 per gallon the numbers are much higher. If you are a single car household driving 15,000 miles per year you will have an expense of over $2600.00 annually. If you are a two car household your yearly expense will be over $5200.00 per year. That is equal to $437.00 monthly. You could likely be spending more for gasoline than you spend on a monthly car payment.

Every time the price of fuel goes up at the pump by 10 cents, the yearly increase for your two car household is $150.00. When the price of fuel jumps 20 cents in a single day, understand that it will increase the cost to you by about $300.00 per year.

Reviewing the yearly cost of your fuel can be depressing. When you consider that you are spending over $5200.00 per year just for gas you cannot help but come to the conclusion that it is time to seriously find ways to lower that cost. When you figure out the 20 cent increase at the pump today is really a cost of $300.00 this year, it provides great motivation to do fix it.