How Much Was Gas in New Jersey When You Started to Drive?

We are all feeling the pain at the pump.

Gas prices continue to rise with the average cost per gallon as of this writing at $5.01 nationwide.

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Why are gas prices in New Jersey so high?

There are lots of different opinions on this one, but according to the New York Times:

The single biggest factor driving the spike now is the price of crude oil. As of April, according to the Energy Information Administration, the cost of the raw material accounted for 60 percent of the price of a gallon of regular gasoline.

The other pieces of the pie are taxes, distribution and marketing, and of course, refining.

When will the price of gas in New Jersey go down?

Gabe Ortega, fuel pricing practice leader at PDI Software, told Newsweek that we shouldn't expect any significant drop in July or August.

The summer months are when people are the most active and making road trips and traveling.

Ortega was asked if the war between Russia and Ukraine ends and if that will bring gas prices back to normal.

The word Ortega used was "stabilize."

He said that a truce would:

ease global crude prices, which would result in a drop in retail fuel prices.

How can you save money on gas?

Auto Zone has a few tips. They say to change your air filter, check your tire pressure, think about a tune-up, and "drive easy."

Auto Zone experts say to:

Use cruise control while driving on the highway and avoid excessive braking and accelerating in city traffic when possible. Rapid acceleration, braking, and speeding can significantly reduce your fuel efficiency; for up to 33% better fuel economy, so keep it steady.

Remember when you didn't have to mortgage your home to fill up your tank?

Or maybe when you started driving we were going through another fuel crisis.

Take a look back at how much gas cost the year you started driving.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.