Wasteful driving
Jan. 13th, 2009 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrWalMart has cheaper groceries than most grocery stores. Grocery stores have cheaper groceries than a corner convenience store. These are "obvious" things that influence shopping decisions for typical Americans on a regular basis. What no one ever considers, much to the detriment of our society, is the cost of gas for everyday trips.
Hypothetically speaking, WalMart is 16 miles from your house while there is a grocery store 4 miles away and a convenience store 1 mile away. Your car gets 32MPG in the city, and gas is $2/gal. A round trip to WalMart costs you $2, $0.50 for the grocery store, and $0.13 for the convenience store (assuming you are too lazy to walk to the convenience store, the subject of another post for another day). Let's say that the grocery store has prices 20% lower than the convenience store, and WalMart has prices 10% lower than the grocery store.
In this scenario, most people still do all of their shopping at WalMart, because it is "cheaper". In reality, the convenience store is cheaper if you spend less than $2 there, and the grocery store is cheaper if you spend less than $15 there. Why, then, do so many people "make a quick trip to WalMart" for $10 worth of groceries a couple of times a week?
When you drive to another state, you budget $XX for gas for the trip. But when you drive a few miles, you never think of the $X cost as part of the trip. The weekly fill-up is, to the typical driver, completely unrelated to the actual driving that they do during the week. You just don't connect that money leaving your wallet with the activities that cost you the money. This same thing applies to almost any sort of casual driving.
You ask someone how far away something is, most people these days will answer in the amount of time it takes to drive there. The fact that people inherently assume that you are driving, as opposed to taking MARTA, or walking or biking, is a serious and fundamental problem that is the subject of another post for another day. What you should force yourself to do is, in your head, replace "one minute per mile" with "five cents per mile". If, every time you heard "the store is only twenty minutes away" you replaced that with "it costs two dollars to get to the store and back", you would find yourself making far more responsible and informed decisions.
Hypothetically speaking, WalMart is 16 miles from your house while there is a grocery store 4 miles away and a convenience store 1 mile away. Your car gets 32MPG in the city, and gas is $2/gal. A round trip to WalMart costs you $2, $0.50 for the grocery store, and $0.13 for the convenience store (assuming you are too lazy to walk to the convenience store, the subject of another post for another day). Let's say that the grocery store has prices 20% lower than the convenience store, and WalMart has prices 10% lower than the grocery store.
In this scenario, most people still do all of their shopping at WalMart, because it is "cheaper". In reality, the convenience store is cheaper if you spend less than $2 there, and the grocery store is cheaper if you spend less than $15 there. Why, then, do so many people "make a quick trip to WalMart" for $10 worth of groceries a couple of times a week?
When you drive to another state, you budget $XX for gas for the trip. But when you drive a few miles, you never think of the $X cost as part of the trip. The weekly fill-up is, to the typical driver, completely unrelated to the actual driving that they do during the week. You just don't connect that money leaving your wallet with the activities that cost you the money. This same thing applies to almost any sort of casual driving.
You ask someone how far away something is, most people these days will answer in the amount of time it takes to drive there. The fact that people inherently assume that you are driving, as opposed to taking MARTA, or walking or biking, is a serious and fundamental problem that is the subject of another post for another day. What you should force yourself to do is, in your head, replace "one minute per mile" with "five cents per mile". If, every time you heard "the store is only twenty minutes away" you replaced that with "it costs two dollars to get to the store and back", you would find yourself making far more responsible and informed decisions.
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Date: 2009-01-14 04:55 am (UTC):confused:
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Date: 2009-01-14 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 06:31 am (UTC)But good points all around.
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Date: 2009-01-14 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 04:05 pm (UTC)Walmart carries store brand diapers (and groceries) that actually work as well as regular diapers and are half the price. I use about 106 diapers a week. (regular diapers are about .23 a piece, store brands usually cut that by half, to about .11 each, but not all of them are any good. Lots of defects, and made of different materials that do or don't work. Target brand diapers, for instance, don't work for my kids. Before you ask why cloth diapers aren't an option, cloth diapers would then include the cost of cleaning them in dye free, fragrence free laundry detergent as my kids get horrible rashes from just about everything, also not including the time that it takes that I simply don't have).
Target sells Target brand baby formula that my kids don't react badly to, which is a fairly large problem in that they do react badly to the Walmart brand baby formula. A can of powdered baby formula costs about 20 dollars, a can of store brand costs about 11 dollars. I wish I had been able to breastfeed, but my milk never came in despite repeated attempts, and hospital visits. I buy about 4 cans of baby formula a week.
These are not unusual problems. Many Americans have children, the children have needs, it's much more time economical to go one store that sells everything than to go to several. I'm not even going to mention the unmentionable price of diapers and baby formula at convenient stores.
Split all of that by half for a normal family with baby, sure, but even then it's considerable. You can say that families in less affluent countries don't have these things and yet they survive, but I can tell you surely, mine wouldn't have. Infant mortality is also much higher in less affluent countries.
All of this is just the family stuff, but the reality is, what you might be rich in (time or money or transportation) another person might be poor in, and they make their decisions, often, based on that. Even without kids, not everybody has the same resources. I hate the bullshit that people spend their money on, but I'm positive that my necessary is someone else's vanity just as their necessary is my vanity.
Try to take it easy on other peoples decisions. You just never know, man.
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Date: 2009-01-14 06:10 pm (UTC)PS: Congrats. You guys planning to make it to any cons this year?
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Date: 2009-01-14 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 10:12 pm (UTC)Granted, this isn't for the purpose of saving money/gas -- it's because I dislike travel time in general. It feels inefficient, like my time could be better spent doing something else. I walk at a pace that is a near-jog for most people, when I'm walking alone. I drive fast (which I realize does waste gas). I'll take a route that's twice as long if it gets me there 10% faster.
I do, however, think in terms of "it will cost me $x in gas to attend this event," and mentally add that to the event cost in my head. I should break it down further and also include wear and tear on my car. Just haven't had the motivation to do the necessary research for that.
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Date: 2009-01-14 10:15 pm (UTC)