Budget Freak

Since I bought my truck (a 2005 Nissan Frontier) in April of 2005, I’ve been keeping a log of every time I’ve filled up with gas. There were times I forgot the receipt or the machine ran out of receipt paper, but overall, I’ve managed to record about 90% of my fill-ups. I love looking at statistics, so below some fun gas facts from 2006.

• I recorded 41 trips to the gas station, pumping 742.3 gallons of gas, costing me $2,133.98, and covering 13,777.1 miles
• My average cost per gallon in 2006 was $2.87, and my average cost per mile was $0.155
• The cheapest gallon of gas was the first fill up in 2006, of January 6th, costing me $2.27
• The most expensive gallon was on May 18th, costing me $3.40 (OUCH!)
• I averaged 18.55 miles per gallon in 2006, with a maximum of 20.69 mpg and a minimum of 14.64 mpg
• I averaged 336.02 miles per fill up, with a maximum of 407.6 miles
• The most I paid to fill up in 2006 was $67.46, and the least was $39.15
• When I started by new job in September, my commute was about the same distance, 30 miles each way, but the breakdown between highway and city streets went from 50% city/50% highway to 10% city/90% highway. The average cost per mile went from $0.167 from January to August, to now $0.129 from September to December

I graphed out the price of a gallon over the year (note I missed a few readings between August and September, hence the sudden drop during that time), but overall, it’s almost a perfect bell curve, with prices rising in summer, and then cooling off in the winter.

If the last few months of my gas usage is any indication, 2007 should be much less expensive for me. Let’s hope anyway.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed