thedebtblog.co.uk

Something like 1 in 6 people have considered quitting their jobs because the increasing cost of fuel prices means that their daily commute to work is costing too much.

People really are struggling to cope with rising fuel costs and would consider such drastic action to cut their monthly costs.

More and more people are chosing to leave their cars at home and try public transport or trying to car share with others, either work colleagues or friends, even next door neighbours.

The basic fact is that fuel prices have risen by 21 per cent over the last 12 months and experts are predicting further increases over the coming weeks and months. Every time I fill my tank I certainly notice the 1 or 2 pence increase from the last time. Things cannot carry on like this, surely!?

Last week there were strikes by tanker drivers which didn’t actually cause a fuel shortage but reports in the media made people panic and start filling their cars and containers. Some people were buying upto 100 litres in one go and you certainly can’t put all that in the average family car’s tank! The actual figure was 1 in 10 petrol stations MAY have a shortage of fuel. But still people rushed out to fill their cars!

As for public transport most of the time I think you’re better off in a car. It depends where you live, in terms of proximity to a train station and then where you’re trying to get to. Some train journey’s I’ve researched take almost twice as long as the same journey by car! Ticket prices can be high especially if, like everyone who’s commuting, you need to travel in peak hours. If I had the choice it would be a car share scheme for me. I’ve just done a very quick peice of research and found this website offering you the ability to check for car share schemes in your local area, good idea! http://carshare.com/default.asp?region=6#carsharesites

People are also dreaming up more cost cutting methods when it comes to the car - 10 per cent are thinking about not driving their children to school, 15 per cent are thinking about down grading their car, 36 per cent are thinking about purchasing a car with better MPG, and unfortunately 51 per cent of people are considering cutting the amount they’d spend on servcing and MOT’ing their cars.

Of course you should also consider shopping around for car insurance online, make sure you take a few minutes to get the car insurance quotes online using one of the comparison web sites there are plenty to choose from!

With the price of petrol recently hitting $135 a barrel, prices at the pumps hit 116p per litre for petrol and diesel around 130p a litre, so can you do anything to cut the costs of motoring?

Aside from converting your car to run on LPG there are a few ways you can try and economise your fuel consumption when driving. For starters there are ways that your driving actions can be adjusted to be more economical.

Keep your speed down to 55 to 65 mile per hour as this is regarded as the most fuel efficient speed to drive at. If you go faster your fuel consumption will increase. Don’t break or accelerate very suddenly at high speeds, try and move smoothly through the gears without over reving the engine. Additional revs mean more fuel consumption and being less agressive like this could save you up to a staggering 30 per cent on fuel consumption. Experts say that the best time to change up a gear is 2500 revs per minute (RPM) for a petrol car and 2000 RPM for a diesel car.

Maintaining your car well is another good way to keep your cars fuel consumption as good as possible. Take off any unused roof racks or old tyres and so on, decluttering your car will help it shed a few pounds and a lighter car is a more fuel efficent car. Keeping your tyres pumped up correctly will also contribute to a better fuel consumption, by up to around 10 per cent of your fuel bill. Also a good old fashoined service will assure your engine is at peak performance.

Think about when you use your car and if it really is neccessary, i.e. don’t use the car for short journeys. When it comes to air conditioning try not to use it if you’re travelling under 40 miles per hour, try opening the windows!

I know this is perhaps something we’d all love to do but try to avoid the rush hour traffic! sitting in traffic jams during peak road conjestion times isn’t good for fuel consumption because of the stop and start, changing up and down gears motions.

Of course you could go for a hybrid or LPG car like I said. These use a combination of a normal petrol or diesel engine along with either a battery (in duel fuel cars) or LPG gas (in LPG cars). The battery motor in a Hybrid car will take over at low speed and then the petrol engine takes over at high speeds. An LPG car starts up using the normal petrol engine and then you can switch to the gas power as soon as you like.

The other main benefits of using ‘green’ cars are the lower fuel prices, LPG is currently around 49.9p per litre and also lower car tax and no congestion charge in London.