Gas prices squeezing budgets
BOISE – The average price of gasoline is setting records every day in Idaho, and it is pinching household budgets around a state where the economy is still sluggish.
“I drive all over town for a living, and it’s just killing me,” said 31-year-old Dave Bainbridge, who does auto body and paint work on location in the Boise area.
The Idaho Automobile Association of America said its latest survey showed the price for self-service unleaded gasoline Friday was nearly $2.10 a gallon, up 2 cents in just the past two days and over 50 cents higher than when the year began.
AAA spokesman Dave Carlson said there is no end in sight. Crude oil prices have receded in the past several days, Carlson said, but not all the associated costs have filtered down to the consumer yet.
“So we could expect prices to climb for a week or a couple of weeks,” he said. “We’re treading new ground every month. This is the third time this year we’ve seen new price marks in the state. It’s a time when prices should be down, but the supply situation has really made guessing where prices will be a real crystal-ball exercise.”
Idaho’s average is the ninth highest in the nation and 15 cents higher than just a month ago. The national average price Friday was just over $2.03.
“You’re looking at, what, doubling what it was two years ago, and that’s easily $60 or $100 a month in a household budget,” said Todd Christensen, who runs a financial education program in Idaho for Debt Reduction Services. “That can be tough.”
A counselor at In Charge Debt Solutions said escalating pump prices are putting pressure on the way people live, and Becky Hammond knows exactly what that means.
“You don’t have money to go to dinner, you don’t have money to go to a movie,” said the 48-year-old nurse, who makes the 50-mile round trip from Emmett to Boise every day.
Christensen recommended people keep their cars and trucks in good condition with properly inflated tires to maximize gas mileage. But he said they also have to begin thinking about changing the way they do things.
“It’s a matter of organizing ourselves,” he said. “We’re getting to the point where we need to ask ourselves, ‘Do we need to make that extra trip downtown? Can we consolidate trips?’ “
Jason Haworth, a 29-year-old salesman from Boise, was filling his SUV with gas at $2.12 a gallon at a local Chevron station, lamenting the bite $45 a fill-up takes out of his income.
“I used to buy supreme but I don’t now,” Haworth said. “We’ve got a Chevron card, and we used to have a zero balance every month. We carry a couple hundred dollar balance now.”
That’s where rising gas prices can really become a financial burden, Christensen said. “Credit card interest rates have been rising steadily over the past several months, so with a lot of people buying gas on credit, that just compounds problems,” he said. “Only one in three people with credit cards pay off the balance every month, and half of those who don’t pay off pay only the minimum.”
Businesses, especially in small towns, are also becoming economic victims of record pump prices because many people have begun following Christensen’s advice and are driving less.
Brian Fenrich was on his way back to Boise from a hunting trip when he stopped for gas in the small mountain town of Idaho City, about 45 miles to the northeast. Pumping $2.25-a-gallon gas into his truck was the reason he’s cut back on his hunting trips.
“I’d like to support the economy of small towns,” he said, “But I can’t afford to get to them.”