Rise in gas prices wrecks family budgets

The gas chronicles: readers write about the challenge of rising prices, all this week

The skyrocketing price of gasoline is now the joker in the family budgeting deck.

Before the latest escalation to record levels, Rebekah O'Connell, a credit counselor with Triangle Family Services, said her clients had an easier time estimating their monthly fuel costs. Now, "people are just taking wild guesses," O'Connell said.

With projections saying gas prices in the Triangle will hit $3.50 a gallon around May, drivers are wrestling with similar issues -- how to cut fuel consumption while making room for this ballooning part of our budget.

When The News & Observer asked a handful of Triangle residents to keep travel diaries for about a week, many, such as Wake Forest caterer Nan Holton, volunteered to log their trips and jot down their daily driving reflections. We wanted to see whether they would discover any surprises in how they drove and whether they had any strategies to share for conserving gas.

In an Elon University poll earlier this month, about 31 percent of North Carolinians surveyed said the price of gas is the No. 1 transportation issue facing the state today.

The latest increases in gasoline prices are related to the economy's slowdown, according to AAA Carolinas. Instead of being fueled by demand for gasoline, the recent price jumps are driven by unprecedented levels of investment in crude oil markets as a hedge against the falling dollar and as a safe haven from sliding prices in real estate, said David E. Parsons, AAA Carolinas president.

And as oil refineries retool to switch to cleaner-burning summer-blend gasoline and driving increases in the approaching warmer months, Parsons expects prices to continue to spiral up.

On the road a lot

With little control over global forces that can send prices soaring -- from hurricanes to turmoil in the Middle East -- people are looking for smaller but concrete ways they can cope.

But it isn't easy.

Holton, a divorced mother of two, has had trouble cutting her driving. She can easily put 50 to 70 miles a day on her 2007 Subaru Forester, between shuttling her daughter to school, soccer and piano lessons and driving herself to catering jobs at Trinity Baptist Church in the North Hills area and elsewhere. Typically, Holton hauls enough food each week to serve more than 300 people -- dinners of meatloaf, spaghetti or chicken pot pie.

"The driving to work -- I don't have a choice," she said. "Too bad your income doesn't go up at the same rate."

About once a month, Holton also drives to New Bern to visit her 86-year-old mother in a nursing home and to cook meals for her 87-year-old father, who lives alone. She's not about to stop making those 250-mile round trips anytime soon, either.

But Holton has tried to rein in her son's spending. In August, she gave the 16-year-old a credit card to use only for fueling up his Honda Accord.

When she got the bill in February, it was $128. Holton pulled the credit card and decided instead to give him a cash allowance of about $50.

"If you need more gas, this is a good incentive to get a job," she told him.

Down to $25 a week

Rebecca Paden, 27, has also started cutting back. Paden moved to Raleigh in July to look for a job with state government.

In February, she vowed to start spending no more than $25 a week on fueling up her 2000 Toyota Echo. That's pretty good. According to Elon's poll, about 53 percent of North Carolinians said they are spending more than $30 a week on gas.

Staying within her budget has meant sacrifices. Paden tries to limit herself to one 74-mile round trip a week to visit friends in Chapel Hill. Facing rising grocery prices, she also started keeping a $25-a-week grocery budget -- for staples and a few comfort foods, such as avocados, which she grew up eating with her Mexican-American family in Texas.

"And I try to stay away from World Market like there's no tomorrow," she said of one of her favorite stores, which sells cosmopolitan furnishings and collectibles.

Her method may have a drawback. She has become a stickler for fueling up once a week on Fridays. Sometimes, when prices seem to spike overnight, she kicks herself for waiting.

But she's sticking to her method.

"The only way I can control what I do is if I limit myself," she said. Gas "is an expense people don't really see, like coffee or cigarettes."

(Staff writer Bruce Siceloff contributed to this report.)