We happened to receive the Star Tribune newspaper on Saturday 6/28 from our neighbors whom were out of town this weekend. A few interesting articles stuck me that will probably help save quite a bit at the pump and may save lives – or at least keep them healthier 🙂
Check out the article here on Fruit & Veggies. It is stuff and we have heard here and there and is encouraging! For lunch today, I eagerly went to the garden in our backyard and picked a number of fresh spinach leaves to top off my sandwich, following that up with a juicy nectarine.
On to the Gas Savings…
Like me, you may be pondering the purchase of a vehicle that gets better gas mileage with prices now over $4/gallon. The article I read this morning on "Hypermiling" in the Star Tribune gave me encouragement to get a few more miles and maybe savings out of my old Jeep Jalopy! Certainly doesn’t seem economical to pay thousand$ for a new vehicle to save maybe $50/month or so. I found many good articles on saving gas with my current vehicle and may even splurge on one of the ScanGuage II products touted in the articles. It is a device that plugs into your vehicles computer port (OBDII) to monitor and analyze many different readings including MPG, etc.
What do you think??
Yeah, I’ve been using some of the ideas from the Hypermiling segment I saw on the news a few weeks back. Not to the extreme extent they do, but anything helps. I also have been biking a little more, like to softball practice.
Consumer Reports recently did an analysis of buying a new high-mileage car vs keeping your own. They came to the same conclusion. It is almost never worth it to by a new car only for high mileage. If you are in the market for a car already, then certainly, but it does not make financial sense to buy it in order to save money on gas.
The ScanGauge II looks like a very cool product. I wonder if we could mitigate its relatively high cost by sharing one. I’d think that its biggest value would be to show you how much gas is used in various driving situations and conditions. Once you get a feel for that, you don’t really *NEED* it for that anymore, and could be used by someone else. Of course, it is a cool gadget, and you might want one of your own for that reason alone.
I like the idea of sharing one – much like we did with the gear puller! 🙂
Biking is certainly the best option when it comes to saving money and living healthier! It is possible for me to bike to work along the Minneapolis Grand Rounds route. It is a great bike ride – but adds an hour to my round-trip. Not bad if I can save $100/month or more!
Please update me on your progress with the Hypermiling. It would be good for me and others to see how it works and what we save!
FYI – regarding the posts – I have it set to approve them prior to having them posted. That is to mitigate spammers. I am going to remove that “feature” though as I can always delete a comment that is from a spammer.
Anyone else?