Do you MAKE money when gas goes up?

Maybe the proper word is save. I was doing my weekly drive to the la-area the past few Fridays I've noticed that I've been making the commute about 20-30 minutes shorter. My dad commutes via metrolink and he had told me that since gas has gone up the train has been more full than normal, which made me start to wonder the true impact of rising fuel prices. Am I really spending that much more every day?

Being a firm believer that early to bed, early to rise, is just a bunch of lies, I have a very good idea of how much time it takes for me to get from home to work. I've been noticing that my morning commutes are 3 minutes shorter - and that my afternoon commutes are 6 minutes shorter. Kind of a drop in the bucket considering average commute time of 35 and 40 minutes respectively (haven't really noticed much of a change in my weekend commutes but I don't keep track of how late I am on the weekends).

Before this most recent gas bubble, I was paying about $3.50 a gallon for roughly 11 gallons of gas a week (I drive a civic). The last price I paid was $4.10 for a gallon. So I am spending $6.60 more a week in gas now compared to my February spending.

However just calc'ing the cost of fuel doesn't do justice to the whole financial picture. What about the time I've saved? It's pretty easy to calc the cost of an hour of your life when you're working - for now I'm going to use an easy number so let's say an hour of my life costs $10. Every day I save about 9 minutes total commuting, except for on Fridays when I save 23-33 minutes (3 minutes for the morning and 20-30 for the afternoon). So every week I save between 59 and 69 minutes of my life, so I am saving roughly $10 to $11.50 a week. That minus my extra fuel costs net me $3.40-4.90 a week in savings.

Summary : Our perception of our true costs is humorous to me. Teehee