2 Adults 2 Kids

We have nearly stretched ourselves to our financial breaking point in order to buy the RV and now that we’ve got it, we can’t move it! Then we see the article in the New York Times about oil shooting up 8% to $138 a barrel just because an investment bank said it would hit $150 a barrel by July 4!! Can you believe it?? Investment banks invest, so when they put out a report like that, they only drive up the prices in commodities that they’ve already invested in. Throw speculators in the mix and now we’re all paying higher prices at the pump. There was absolutely no change in the actual oil market itself. The Times quoted someone saying that this whole thing was a bubble, but the end is not in sight.

Initially, I was pretty pissed, but once I got passed the anger the news made me glad that I have an RV and this is why:

It’s an incentive for me not to be paralyzed by gas prices. If prices were higher because of some tax to curb global warming, I’d do everything I could to reduce my consumption. (CM and I shopped around for the most fuel-efficient RV that we could find. The one we ended up buying gets nearly just as good gas mileage as our Honda Odyssey. Which is pretty sad now that I think about it.)

But this is about a handful of people getting rich while we suffer. I feel that as a parent, my children need to travel in order to gain wisdom about the way the world works. They need to learn about different cultures and different ways of doing things. I want them to see that all people don’t obsess over money. I’m going to make that happen even if gas gets up to $10 a gallon because I feel that kind of knowledge is priceless.

How do you react to higher gas prices? Do you stay home or is it business as usual?