Michael & Liz are Bloggable

In the middle of February I got really motivated while looking at our family budget. I get a one-track mind and I go into super budget mode where I want to set goals and scrimp and save as much as I can in every possible way. I then run my aspirations by Liz and she either approves or vetoes the plan. To be honest, I'm blessed that she's supportive 99% of the time, because I can come up with some insane ideas.  Well one expense in our budget is going to get attacked.

One result of my craziness is that I set a date for when we will be paying off the mortgage. While I'm not actually going to reveal that date on the blog until it becomes a reality (feel free to ask me personally), I actually feel like it's an attainable goal and am very excited that it's not decades and decades into the future. The only way we're going to be able to accomplish that goal is by chunking money at the mortgage a little better than we have been. I'm not willing to scrimp on necessary saving for things like retirement, so it's the "unnecessary" expenditures that are getting my evil eye.

So what expense in our budget is going to get attacked? Recently, gas prices have started going up. I am personally not devastated by that situation. I love it when gas prices go up. February, when gas prices were supposedly "too high", we had one of our cheapest months in the last year. Gas prices is not the reason for my blog post here, but the headlines did get me thinking. I started realizing how ridiculous it was that we (as a family) have just disregarded that expense as necessary and unchangeable. For some families it is unchangeable, but for us, right now, it can be reduced.

I started looking back through our monthly budgets over the last year, and here is how much we spent on gas each month:

Month:	$ Spent
Feb 2012	$274.34
Jan 2012	$556.31
Dec 2011	$335.70
Nov 2011	$265.62
Oct 2011	$356.35
Sept 2011	$382.75
Aug 2011	$304.98
Jul 2011	$366.82
Jun 2011	$312.97
May 2011	$310.62
Total:	$3466.46
Average:	$346.65

*In January we drove to Florida and Cincinnati, so it was a month full of travel

I don't know what to make of those numbers, mainly because I don't know what other people spend per month. Liz and I both have relatively "efficient" cars. I say relatively because we don't have massive gas guzzlers. The only long distance driving we do on a weekly basis is about 20 miles (each way) to church several times a week. Other than that I feel like we are either at or below average when it comes to driving.

So in looking at the budget, it got me wondering, if I biked to work every day, what would our gas budget look like? I am all about sweat equity in our house and that's exactly what I'll be contributing. Instead of paying $350 a month in gas, what if I biked to work and put the remaining amount into the house?

Back in August 2010, I biked to work every day of the month except for 3 (rain storms). There are practically zero downsides to biking to work for me. The only one negative I can come up with is that it takes a little longer, 10 minutes vs. 25 minutes. A 25 minute commute on a bike though? That's nothing.

I REALLY wish I had kept the gas records from that August to see how much we spent. I just don't feel like scrounging up the bank statements to take a look. But that HAD to be awesome for the budget. In looking at the blog post results, I only drove 339 miles that month and that includes riding in Liz's car and riding in friend's cars. That's barely even a full gas tank.

Another big influence our lifestyle will have on our gas budget, is starting on March 15th, Liz will no longer commute to work. That's roughly 25 miles a day that she'll no longer have to do. I am not asking her to reduce her driving or not go anywhere, that's absurd, but I doubt she'll be out driving 25 miles a day.

So for the months of March and April at least, I am going to bike to work every day I possibly can. My hope is to reduce our gas budget to anywhere between $150 to $200 a month. I have to believe I'll only fill up my car once, and even assuming Liz just stays the same, our gas budget should come right to about $175. If the biking lifestyle is something I feel I can maintain and it's worth the money saved from our gas budget, I will absolutely make it a permanent change.

I'm sure an extra couple hundred dollars a month will be a nice little boost to our mortgage payoff goal. We have a plan, now it's all about execution.