Gas Prices Beating You Down?

How many of you are not so rich that the price of gas isn't starting to affect your bottom line at home? Not that you're not getting by, but you don't have as much left over at the end of the month to put into savings, or to put aside for your next vacation, or to splurge on those new shoes you've been needing because your old ones are beyond worn out. We are all looking for ways to save on gas and we've all seen the emails to boycott getting gas for a day or tips on how to not waste money at the pump. Below is a link to a list of myths debunked if you bought into them in the first place. Don't bother to waste your time with these.Your time and efforts are better spent doing other things. http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/12/autos/ways_to_not_save_gas/index.htm?postversion=2008051515

You know what the quickest fix for a lot of families would be while the government sorts out to drill or not to drill, and other cost effective fuel initiatives? Making the move to work from home. Many of us have at least one if not two family members whose jobs are tied up in email, documents, and time-wasting meetings. All of this can be done at home, on your computer there and with your phone there. And many of us drive in from the burbs every day just to go to work at another computer. This would not only be a viable option for employees, but could save companies money from leasing space and other overhead, even if they wanted to keep a certain amount of facilities for those who didn't want to work from home or those who have proven not to be trusted to work from home. This could be determined by allowing those who have earned the trust in the work place and subsequently, at home, continue to meet deadlines and respond in a timely manner to emails and phone calls, as well as calling into meetings they are supposed to be apart of.

Already you read of reports of compressing the workweek all over the country. In fact today, we were offered that option, obviously with the threat that it can be revoked if abused or if you are somehow even less productive than showing up 5 days. While this is progress, and is better than nothing, it still won't curb the gas prices or take care of the fact that I have to dress up for work. It would save me maybe $15-$20/month at $4/gallon of gas. But I drive a Civic. I suppose it could save those of you with worse mileage or who live farther from work than I do, 2-3 times that. So it's a start.

My hope though is that there will be a trend to let workers telecommute. Incidentally this would help solve the traffic problems that many cities are facing today. And it would solve the problem of having to see moody, lazy, cranky, or just plain irritating co-workers everyday.