How high do gas prices have to be to where you can't drive anymore?

Question

Let's just say, if they got high enough to where you couldn't drive to work or do errands. The only reason for driving would be a serious emergency.

Answer 1

They'd have to be pretty high to make me miss work = money or church = salvation...

Answer 2

$300 a barrel.

Answer 3

Try living in Europe then complain about gas prices. That's why we all have bikes (not the UK)

Answer 4

i already think the prices are to high to drive so thats why i sit at home and only go if i need to. some people are even catching buses or riding bikes to work. its crazy,and the price continues to go up.

Answer 5

It's hard to say because we either have to work more to compensate for gas, or we have to work a day less to save $$ in gas.  When it gets over $100 a fill-up, which unfortunately at this rate prolly won't be long, I'm gonna have to consider not only a smaller vehicle, but also living closer to work, & if it gets even worse, working a day less & trying to find work closer to home.

Answer 6

I drive as little as possible now.  I have a hybrid, so that helps, but I still have appointments to go to when they come up.  I am continuously shocked by the cost.

I guess next time I go to my daughter's house, I'll be checking out train tickets.  

With my hybrid, when I am in bumper to bumper traffic, I use practically no gas, so that increases my mileage.

Answer 7

I'm pretty much there!  $4.00+ is just way to much for me to be shelling out to drive when I live in a city with pretty good public transportation and everything is close by.  I will only drive to the grocery store about once a week till gas goes down (or if there's an emergency, i.e. sick kid to doctor or hospital..)

Answer 8

$4.50

id horse and buggy it

Answer 9

Probably around $10-12 for me. Then I'll move closer to work and ride a bike. As it is now I live about 20 miles away, have a 4 cyl commuter car and spend about $50/week on gas including trips outside of going to work and back.

Answer 10

I get free gas from my work so the prices dont effect me, but they do annoy me very much and i feel bad for people who dont have this perk. I would say after 150 i would stop, i miss the days where we thought that 80 was high :)

Answer 11

I would say Probably  $10 its alredey half there almost here in Ca its $4.30

Answer 12

If it was $10 a gallon, then my fuel costs would be $500 a month, and I'd probably move into a tiny apartment close to work.  Then I'd ride my bicycle to work.

Answer 13

if it was to the point that i could not possibly in any way pay for even a gallon of gas i would just run my truck off straight vegetable oil. waste vegetable oil at that- restaurants will pay me to come and get it.

right now we use a WVO mix though. but, we could sell it to others that drive diesel and make one h**l of a profit.

Answer 14

~$40/gal.

Answer 15

At $9/gallon I'll start cutting down on my driving. I might stop once it gets into double digits. We'll see

Answer 16

In different light, since I commute to work every day, when is it cheaper to stop working?

Answer 17

Figure out how many miles you need to drive on a weekly basis.  This would include your commute to work and necessary errands such as grocery shopping, dry cleaning...etc.  Let's say hypothetically you need to drive 75miles per week or 300 miles per month.

Now figure out your gas milage on your car. Let's make things easy and suppose that you can drive for 300 miles on a full tank in a car that gets an average of 25 miles per gallon.  So it takes you one full tank per month to fulfill all necessary driving and you require 12 gallons of gas to do so.

Now figure out your expendable income. Subtract all your cost of living expenses (not including gasoline) from your post-tax income to figure out how much money you have left over at the end of the month.  Lets suppose you earn $3,500.00 per month after taxes and it takes $3,200 to pay rent, food, utilities, set aside some savings and take care of your other bills each month.  This means you have $300 leftover every month.  

Now, technically you can afford $300.00 to purchase 12 gallons of gas each month.  This would mean that you could afford to spend $25 per gallon of gas to do all your necessary driving in your vehicle.

At $25.01 per gallon, you would not be able to drive anymore.

Feel free to apply this hypothetical formula to your own real-world situation to figure out what you can afford for gasoline.

Answer 18

um for me i would 6$ i would ride my bike

Answer 19

Not too much higher - I have a minimum wage job and if my fiance didn't make good money we wouldn't even be able to drive to get groceries.  It's absolutely ridiculous that it takes over $50 to fill up a Ford Mustang.

Answer 20

I think we may know that answer soon enough

Answer 21

For me, maybe $20/gallon (at 2008 dollars).  I cannot afford to move and I have to drive for everything.

But the beauty of capitalism is that that will not happen.  Gasoline/oil are still the cheapest fuels and current prices are a bubble that will at some point burst.  However, with worldwide demand increasing and oil getting more expensive to extract as the "easy" oil is used up, the long term trend will be higher prices.  As prices rise, at some point, it will be getting close to the cost of alternative fuels and the energy industry will start getting serious on finding alternative energy sources as there will always be a demand for energy.  We already have the technology to convert coal to oil and there is plenty of coal to be mined so it could happen fast.  The real danger is the inflation that rising fuel prices feeds - it may be too fast for wages to keep up.  That is the real reason that domestic energy sources must be used.  Much of the fuel costs is due to allowing the artificially high dollar to return to its natural level which allows USA exports to be competitive (good for making middle class jobs) but increases the costs of imports.  Less demand on imported energy means less inflation.  Anyway, bottom line is that wages will increase so the fuel costs, although relatively more, should never reach the level where the employed cannot afford to use them although driving will take some budget planning.  Unfortunately, if pressure causes big government to get involved, the higher taxes to pay for the subsidies will mean that it could become unaffordable because people will have so little money on hand.

Answer 22

$450/gallon would make it really difficult.