* And if you have children who ride the bus to school make sure they are ready on time in the morning so they don't miss their free ride!
* If your children forget their homework or lunch at home and the school is quite a drive... well, I'll leave that one up to you. But if you DO run it up to school, consider running additional errands while you're out!
* Movie tickets are already pretty high, but now we’ve got to consider the added cost of traveling there and back. Consider renting video's or even buying them from Blockbuster and Hollywood video! Hollywood Video in my area has these awesome deals where you can get 3 DVD's for $25 (and they are almost ALL new releases), and then the older ones are usually 5 for $20 - you can't beat that! Watch for those specials, and you can save that way!
* If your family has two or more cars you might want to consider sizing down, as long as the extra trips won't end up costing you even more than maintaining the additional cars.
* If you’re a double-income working couple and are commuting to work in two separate cars, have the one who’s job is the furthest away drive whichever car gets better gas mileage.
* If you’re not sure what your car’s gas mileage is… you can calculate that by writing down the odometer reading when you fill up your tank or resetting the trip meter to zero. Then, the next time you get gas, make a note of the mileage and how many gallons it takes to fill the tank back up. Take the difference in mileage (which is how many miles you drove on the trip meter), and divide it by how many gallons of gas it takes to fill up. For example, if you drove 100 miles and it takes 5 gallons of gas to fill your tank back up, you're getting 20 mpg. My Ford Explorer ('97) has a digital read-out for me of how many gallons I got every time I fill up. Remember to check it and you can figure out how to cut costs that way too! (plus you can keep track of how good you're doing!)
* Your gas mileage may also vary just a bit with each fill up depending on traffic and how you're driving, but you'll have a good idea of what your average is by continuing to keep track of your mileage over several weeks or months (a small notebook would be handy). Once you have at least several weeks of figures to use, add the mpg averages together and divide them by how many there are. For example, if you've got averages of 20, 21, 19, 22, and 25, your total would be 107 and you would divide that figure by 5, bringing your average to 21.4 mpg.
* If your car gets less than 20 mpg you might consider trading it in for one that's more efficient. SUVs may be great cars, and I truly love mine, but right now it kinda sucks LOL
You might also want to consider a hybrid car if that's in the budget. Upon research I found that not only do they get 77mpg (yep that's NOT a typo!) they are relatively easy to use and OWN!
Plus in 2004 they had a tax discount for hybrid car owners:
"Under the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004, the deduction amount is limited to $2,000 for cars first put into use in 2004 and 2005. The deduction will be limited to $500 for vehicles placed in service in 2006, and no deduction will be allowed after that year..." http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=107766,00.html Hurry up and buy one LOL
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