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Some thoughts about gas prices:

Our trip here to Portland from Colorado Springs was about 1500 miles.

Our gas-guzzling V8 pickup truck, hauling a heavy trailer was getting maybe 11 or 12 miles per gallon on the highway. Assume the worst, and for simplicity's sake, say 10 mpg.

1500 mi. / 10 mpg = 150 gallons.

Gas last year at this time was $2.15/gal.

Gas on our trip maxed out at $2.65/gal.

That's 50� / gallon more, or $75 for the whole trip.

People are saying they're cancelling their vacations or thinking about buying new, smaller cars because gas is so expensive. Are they nuts? You'd cancel your vacation for $75? If you drive 12,000 miles per year, it will cost you an extra $600 to drive this year, compared to last year, even if you're driving a gas guzzler like mine. You can't buy much of a car with an eight-year-old trade-in and $600.

If you do a lot of highway driving (super-economy cars, especially hybrids, don't really do much better than a regular economy model around town), say 60% of your 12,000 annual miles, you might save $300 or so going from, say our Audi @30mpg to a Prius @60mpg:

60% of 12,000 = 7,200 miles

7,200 mi. / 30 mpg = 240 gallons (Audi)

7,200 mi. / 60 mpg = 120 gallons (Prius)

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Savings in gas per year: 120 gallons

120 gallons x $2.65 = $318 annually, or under $30 / month.

Kinda hard to justify a new car payment on that basis, isn't it?

People are driving across town to save 5� / gallon on gas. If you buy 20 gallons to fill up your car, you'll save a buck, total. In my truck, that cheap gas should be no further away than 2 miles (four miles there and back again), or I'm coming out behind. In the Audi, I could drive no more than 6 miles before I'd lose money trying to save a nickel a gallon. In the Prius, I could go no more than about 11 miles to save that dollar (can a Prius even hold 20 gallons?)

If gas continues to go up, of course, these numbers will change. But the cost of a new hyper-economical car would likely go up, too (as they already have), and the value of your trade-in would go down. You still might want to have a more economical car, on the principle of the thing, because it's the right thing to do, but as a way of saving money, you need to be a long-haul trucker for it to matter much.

Don't panic. Yet.