Until this summer, I didn't consider a domestic flight a good deal unless it was under $100 for a one-way ticket. Since June, though, I know I'm lucky if I can find a flight anywhere that won't cost more than a mortgage payment.

A new study from USA Today shows exactly how much those prices have gone up because of fuel surcharges:

• Los Angeles to Bangkok -- up $352 over last year's fuel surcharge with a fuel surcharge of $542
• Washington, D.C to Tokyo -- up $400 over last year thanks to a $630 fuel surcharge
• New York to Dublin -- up $138 over last year because of a $230 fuel surcharge

Prices jumped sharply when jet fuel prices took off and airlines were forced to increase fuel surcharges in ticket fares. But now jet fuel is down sharply, comparable to last year's prices, yet the high prices remain all across the industry. What gives?


Outraged travelers accuse airlines of greed, but the airlines argue the surcharges are still necessary. A Northwest Airlines spokesperson says that prices "continue to exceed the surcharge levels in place," adding that many existing surcharges were not in place when oil was at its record high earlier this year. Other airlines say that the surcharges they were charging when jet fuel was at its high of $4.34 per gallon in July could not keep up with the costs to the airlines, so that now even though jet fuel is down below $2.40 per gallon, they are still trying to catch up with all the costs incurred over the summer.

Laundry has always been a chore I have a hate-hate relationship with. It seems that no sooner do I get a load out of the dryer that I'm doing the whole darn process all over! Not only do I seem to waste lots of time on laundry but I've found that we also waste a lot of room in washer loads which translates into wasted cash. We try to always run loads of laundry which are full but since we don't have a lot of space we kept all of our laundry in one hamper which made it difficult to figure out what we had the most of as opposed to what's easy to grab.

Last week we splurged on a $20 collapsible hamper with 3 compartments and I'll never look back! After only a week I can honestly say this is the best $20 I've spent on a household item for our apartment. The new hamper takes up only slightly more space than our old hamper but the way we do laundry is transformed. We no longer need to guess at how many towels lie hidden below our work clothes; each type of laundry has its own spot which is conveniently 1 load's worth of laundry.

I don't have any hard data from my experience to back up the savings yet but the cost of one load of laundry depending on utility costs and detergent ranges from $.60 to $1 so even if I only save one load a week I've paid of my hamper purchase in 2-3 electric bills. That doesn't even factor in the reduction in time spent sorting laundry or dealing with moving a half load through the entire laundry process which I can use to do other things like write posts like this one. Finally, since the basket is collapsible it takes up less space than our old one and I feel a sense of accomplishment from finishing a load!

Even though Fuelly seems to have too many vowels to be a web 2.0 application it has hit the ground running and provides users with a cool new way to track fuel usage. I had previously written about Fuel Frog, which lets you track your gas usage online at each fill up and it does a great job, but Fuelly really raised the bar. Fuelly has added a social aspect to tracking gas mileage by letting you compare your MPG with others driving your car and also with your friends and family to see who is getting the best mileage.

If you can get your friends to start using Fuelly then you'll have more of an incentive to track your gas mileage and be fuel efficient since we all seem to enjoy a little competition. You may find out some interesting stats about your friend's fuel usage while using Fuelly. While I have a fuel efficient car, I tend to drive like I'm trying to put out a fire somewhere while my friends with bigger vehicles are known to drive more like a 90 year old out for a Sunday drive. I can't wait to see who is getting more for their money.

I'm going to take Fuelly for a spin today when I fill up my car, I have fallen behind in my usage of Fuel Frog partly because I am lazy and partly because I couldn't remember the format for tracking it by text message. The competitive angle of Fuelly may be just what I need to stick with tracking my fuel cost and usage better and figuring out how to best budget for my gas needs. No matter how you track your gas consumption doing so is an easy way to empower yourself to watch your finances.



Hat tip to Lifehacker.