As NJ gas price hits $5, here’s what it cost when you first drove
Holy smokes. It actually happened.
In New Jersey gas is averaging five dollars a gallon. Just … wow.
On Tuesday I filled my tank and for the first time ever I paid just pennies shy of $90. Again …wow.
We can definitely play the blame game with cries of “Thanks Joe Biden” (and you wouldn’t be wrong) and excuses about Ukraine and dozens of other things. Truth is everything is coming undone right now. Grocery prices are through the roof. Trying to feed my four kids when two of the four are gluten-free and one also dairy-free is robbing me blind. Everything is costing too much.
These runaway gas prices are certainly adding to increasing prices elsewhere and will continue to do so. I was trying to reminisce when I first got my driver’s license what gas prices were back then. I seem to remember them being a dollar and change.
Well I found this terrific tool that I want to share with you. It gives you year-by-year going all the way back into the 1920s the average price of gas in the United States. They put this under the heading of the cost of gasoline the year you were born. But you can just as easily look up the year you started driving. After all, that’s when you were really aware of the cost of fuel.
Here’s the link to look it up.
A few examples.
If you’ve been driving for ten years, the cost of a gallon of gas in 2012 was $3.64.
If you’re 37 and got your license in 2001? $1.46.
Go back 40 years it was $1.22 in 1982.
Here’s the interesting part. The tool also gives the adjusted price in 2022 dollars and it’s an eye opener. What was $1.22 in 1982 was actually $3.62 in 2022 dollars.
2012’s $3.64 was $4.56 by 2022 dollars.
Even going all the way back to 1933 when a gallon of gas was just $0.18? Actually $3.81 by 2022 dollars.
So gasoline has simply almost always been too expensive.
The heyday for low gas prices when adjusted by today’s dollars was actually the 1990s. Thanks Bill Clinton!
MORE: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving
Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.
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