Improving Your Cars Gas Mileage

As a kid, I never learned, was taught how, or paid attention to finances, technical or mechanical or monetary or other responsibilities, and hence I never had a concept of taking note of one’s car’s gas mileage.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, really, that I cared about, paid attention to, and learned how to record my car’s gas mileage, and more importantly—WHY doing so is beneficial. My friend, a retired grocery store clerk who took on a new job tutoring, would often take me along on his Saturday errands. One of those errands involved filling his van’s gas tank. Once a week, my friend would pull up to the pumps, gas up, then get back in his van and pull from the glove box a little hand-size spiral notebook.

He would write down the date, the car’s mileage, and the amount of gas he had just put in.

At the times he did this, I would think that the act of recording one’s gas mileage was for him in character with the way his brain worked: a genius by most standards, my buddy was always calculating something, always reaching into the geeky pocket protector for a pen, often scribbling or discussing an innovative, historically based, or scientific idea. So I thought his recording his gas mileage was merely an additional intellectual activity he did to assuage the mental demons or ward off senior dementia or something.