DC Bound and Saving Money
Jun 26th, 2009 by Cathy Jo Nelson
Tonight as my husband and I finish our packing for the NECC 2009 trip to DC, we were marveling over the Prius we bought last August. You see, after living 
three hours away from home for my job, and traveling practically every weekend home (for church, to visit with hometown friends and family, and more) we decided a wise investment would be to trade in my Chrysler Sebring for a Toyota Prius. I wrote about my car once before here and my new one here. I can’t rave enough about the car, how it drives, the cool gadgets, and even the roomy feel inside despite being a small car. Tonight we sat down and looked at our gas bills over the last 2 years. Now mind you, we have 3 cars in my family: a Jeep Wrangler, a Scion TC, and the Toyota Prius. So all three of these cars are filled with gas. We strictly use a “gas” card, and no other types of purchases are made using the gas card, which is paid off monthly. So let’s compare gas expenditures over the last two school years since getting the Prius, the time I spent driving back and forth to the beach 3 hours away.
August 2007 – June 2008 = $8343.46
August 2008 – June 2009 = $5481.50
Wow, how incredible is this? This is also factoring in the freaky surge in gas prices that haunted us from late summer through early winter this past year! And we have driven my car to Alabama, Tennessee, and Chicago during this time frame for family trips as well! Getting the Prius, despite the gas woes in pricing this pastyear has saved us $2861.96
Yes this was definitley a wise investment. And I have found I love this “George Jetson” style car too.
Unfortunately, all that savings will go up in smoke just any time now because 3 years is about the life span of the main battery which just happens to cost about $4000 as one of my green friends found out to his chagrin earlier this year.
We love our 2007 Toyota Prius and will be looking for a new one soon. We have put about 80,000 miles on it already and haven’t regretted getting it at all. Last year we put about 11,000 miles on it during our 2 months of traveling and this year we put almost 12,000 miles on it in 2 months. It had lots of room, was comfortable, and saved us so much on gas! Glad you are enjoying yours too!