Green Living by Janet Marchant: How to Save More on Gas Than You've Ever Dreamed of Spending!

Oh, boy! It's time again for my family's annual trip to the dealership to pick up one of the very latest hybrid SUV's. Springtime is the perfect time to spring into gas savings with a new, high-powered vehicle that will be the envy of all your green friends and neighbors. We always make sure to test drive the biggest, heaviest new models we can find, and see how difficult it is to park them, because we know that the more times we have to drive around a block looking for a space we can squeeze into, the more gallons of gas we are saving with the hybrid over a comparably sized vehicle without that miraculous feature. (Somebody once tried to explain to us the difference between the amount of gas saved and the total used, but it sounded complicated, so we just stick with our maximum gas savings rule.)

Yes, I know it's hard to think about buying a new car in these tough financial times, but when you think about how much money you'll save by filling up the tank of a hybrid SUV instead of an ordinary one, you'll see that you can't afford not to buy a new vehicle.

I'm not sure what our best option will be this year. The hybrid Behemoth looks like a nice model, but so do the Travesty and the Circumnavigator. We're just going to have to drive a bunch of different ones to make sure we can all be happy with our choice for the next ten or twelve months. So if you're looking to save the planet (and some serious gas money), maybe we'll pass each other on our test drives!