April 11, 2005 - Gas Prices: How High Can They Go?

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Gas Prices: How High Can They Go?
By Aldon Cheatham
April 11, 2005

Here it is, a little past midnight, Sunday evening (April 3, 2005) and I’ve just finished updating another issue of ninetyandnine.com. Instead of heading to bed, I figured I would put some thoughts on paper.

I remember paying 75 cents for a gallon of gas. Nowadays gas prices are through the roof. It is ridiculous how much I have to pay to drive. It’s bad enough that cars cost $15,000-$20,000—and that’s just for a cheap car.

Then, on top of that, it seems like cars are getting less fuel efficient! The government, fuel companies, and car companies are all in collusion and out to get me. The government needs my tax dollars, so they’re working with OPEC to keep the price of a barrel of crude oil high. This, in turn, makes the fuel companies charge me more at the pump. Oh, and the government is making the car companies build cars with bad fuel efficiency and I can’t build my own engine or car, so I’m stuck having to buy the fuel INefficient car! Give me a break! All I know is it’s not my fault.

I feel like such a victim.

Scratch that, reverse it. Let's give this a little more thought...

Bottled Water vs. Gasoline
Sunday, April 10, my wife and I attended our final class at Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU). I didn’t realize how much I needed this class until I started attending. It was given to us as a Christmas gift by her father and step-mother. I believe FPU is the gift that will keep on giving and will turn out to be more valuable than anything we’ve ever been given.

Now, I would like to state that I’m no guru or perfectionist when it comes to Dave’s suggestions, but Leslie and I have put several of Dave’s theories into practice and they’ve come in handy. By the way, the class was only 13 weeks. I think anyone can set aside one day a week for 13 weeks.

OK, what was that first paragraph about? Well, since starting the class, the price of gas has become a non-issue. That’s right, a non-issue. I got to thinking about it the other day and on a regular basis, before FPU, I found myself buying a 20 oz bottle of Dasani, Coca-Cola’s brand of bottled water. I want to be clear; Dave Ramsey did not tell us to stop buying bottled water. However, there’s a level of personal responsibility that comes with financial peace.

Let me be a nerd for a minute here. There are 128 oz. in one gallon. Dasani bottled water at a gas station typically costs about $1.20 (in the Nashville, TN area). Gas is about $2 per gallon. That means that to buy a gallon of Dasani, you would pay roughly $7.68 before tax. I do realize I’m comparing apples to oranges, but no one ever complains about the price of a 20 oz drink. I argue that buying bottled water, or its ilk, is Christians basically not acting like good stewards of our money.

Dave’s teachings are common sense. If you’ll practice the baby steps with the intensity of a gazelle, you won’t have to worry about gas prices (Aldon’s interpretation).

One Last Tidbit
If you look at the ratio between credit card debt and that same amount of money on the positive side plus the interest that was paid to the credit card company (19 percent?), the difference is about 40 percent. There’s a reason they loan out absorbent amounts of money…it pays and it pays well.

Fellow Christians—it’s time for us to take responsibility for ourselves. It’s time for us to stop being victims. It’s time for us to take control of our today and our future.

The real beauty of the entire class is that anyone can have financial peace. A new argument; anyone can have Spiritual peace.

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1)

ninetyandnine.com

Aldon Cheatham is the current managing webmaster of ninetyandnine.com. He was married July 31, 2004 and couldn’t be any happier. He has learned that the key to a great man is a wife.