Costs Are Relative — Cost of a Gallon of Gas, etc.
Fuel: Just looked a few minutes ago and diesel at the Shell station around the corner is 36 Philippine Peso per liter ($3.36 USD per Gallon) and unleaded regular is 42.10 Philippine Peso per liter ($4.00 USD per Gallon). Here’s a clip from an article I read after I came home about fuel prices in the US…
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the average cost for a gallon of diesel fuel in the Midwest this week was $3.78, up more than $1.11 from a year ago and $1.67 a gallon from the same week in 2005. Gas price Web site, www.Gasbuddy.com, yesterday reported diesel prices in the Toledo area as high as $4 per gallon…
I note that’s in the upper Midwest, historically a cheaper area than say California.
Currency: The Philippine Pesos is toying with us again, down against the dollar for several days now, not sure if the ’street rate’ like you can get in a department store dollar/peso exchange has crossed from the 40’s to the 41’s territory, but yesterdays’s official rate moved well into 41 territory:
Hard to say what foreign exchange is going to do … I was amused/saddened to see a huge foreign exchange company banner ad on Yahoo Finance with quotes from a Bloomberg analyst (among others) stating "get out of dollars, now! they aren’t the currency to hold". lessee, 
Bloomberg, isn’t he some kind of big-deal public official in the US … probably wears a US flag on his suit lapel. Wonder if he tells the chief financial officer of New York to get rid of dollars? 
Electricity: Most volatile consumer item I’ve run across here in the Philippines is my electric bill. Hardly a day goes by that there isn’t a rate hike or rate cut announced in the newspaper. Yet they all seem to make little difference. I paid the peso equivalent of about $80 USD last month and the preceding February’s bill was about $76 USD … so how close do you really want to track things?
What’s Important: I run the aircons sensibly, drive when I feel like it and eat what is (mostly) good for me and spend most of my life enjoying things rather than penny-pinching. Life not only can be good, it is good … and I haven’t had to watch a single Democratic or Republican television election commercial in more than a year. Yahoo!
Related posts:
- Any Doubt On Which Way This Chart Is Going?
- Still Going Up — No End In Sight
- ForEx Is Not Just A Trader’s Game
- Pesos per Dollar, Pesos per Liter, My Waistline — All 40 Plus
- What Things Cost — Department Store 1
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May 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
hello again.i live on an island in maine state usa and the price of gas 5.25 usd and diesel is 5.50.i am a lobsterman here and with the fuel price increse we stay out to sea 3 days now instead of coming home everynight.the economy here is so terrible with everything raised exept the pay rate.i really think this will be very very bad soon.it really makes me wonder whats going to happen here.i just bought a sailboat and planning to venture south along the eastcoast to florida in search of work in warmer climates.god will be my shipmate.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Hello Ron. I can say this about your plan …you have chosen the right shipmate.
I know even from a far that things in the US are a lot worse than the news media and the ‘official propaganda’ from Washington lets on. I see a lot of comments/get a lot of email from folks who have the attitude, “poor you, you are stuck there in that third-world country while we are here in the US when everything works right.” Well, more and more, I feel I am the lucky one. I hope you have success on your quest, come back and visit any time, Ron.