Gas prices & EOW commute
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Gas prices are really getting scary now. Yesterday it was $4.19 for the cheapest gas. My dh drives EOW with a gas guzzler of a car approximately 85 miles round trip. I am going to suggest he pick up the man/child once a month and stretch the visit from Friday-Sunday. Now it is from Sat-Sun twice a month. What do you think?
Take the train!
Things change, and chances are, life will not stay how it was when the custody agreement was made. It is certainly worth a try, and that way your DH will have longer quality time with his son. We travel out of state one hour each way, twice every other weekend to pick up SS4. BM will have nothing to do with transportation until now, and it's not in the Custody agreement, so we can do nothing but bitch about it. It's soo annoying, time consuming, and worst of all a drain on the tight budget we already have. However, we have found a little bit of relief in the public transportation near us. We are fortunate to be close enough to a rail system that travels within 15 minutes of where SS lives, so we just started to take the train recently, especaly in light of the gas that is made of gold prices we have been saddled with. We only take it to drop him off, since theres no way she can refuse to pick him up ( although it would make our day hahaha). If you have an option like this anywheres near you, bus or train, try to take advantage. It's much cheaper then driving these days.
courts dont like this
bc thats "too long to be away from the kids"...who cares? u need to do what u need to do. do u think BM will agree?
The kid
is 6 ft tall and is 16. He isn't a baby. I don't think the bm will agree because she will lose a kidfree weekend. It won't hurt to suggest it, I think.
My dh and I came to an
My dh and I came to an agreement that once gas hit $5/gallon that visitation would be cut back to once every 3 weeks. We have a 1 hr and 20 min commute EACH WAY. I just asked him at what cost per gallon would he consider changing the visitations. He must have been thinking about it, because he said $5/gallon with out even blinking or hesitating.
I understand the courts dont like this, but lets face it. They are not filling up your tank, or putting food on your table.
I said to my dh, can you imagine if they start RATIONING gas??? what would happen then??? once every 2 mths?!?!? as we would need our gas to get to work!!!
BM is NOT happy w/this decision.. but then again, who really thought she would be!?
Yes
I understand. I just filled the tank today, again. I paid 70.00 for a 17 gallon tank. This is getting very very scary.
And the bm wouldn't like it------she loses her weekend I tell you! Her free weekend.
Thanks all for the responses.
Just think.. this is the
Just think.. this is the summer.. we only really need gas for the cars and the stove and the water heater.. THEN the winter comes.. not only will we be filling our tanks to get the little darlings, we have to heat our homes. I dont know about you, but that is what I am anticipating eating up most of my income. It is NOT cheap to heat a home, and no matter which method you have for heating your home, its not going to be cost effective.. they are all through the roof.
SO.. that is why we settled on a price.
But seriously.. BM is not happy about it. she is preceiving this as completely engineered by ME, not that DH actually had a say AND set the price himself.
I would bring up the heating the home thing, and ask at what price per gallon would he consider cutting back the visitation to once every 3 weeks. 2 weekends off.. 1 weekend on.. and so on. again.. paint him the whole picture w/the prices of heating your home this winter combined w/the cost of picking up the skids.. SOMETHING's got to give.
our dilema
My ex and I meet about half way EOW on Friday and Sunday. If my ex wants to bring our BD7 home early, I make him bring her all the way home, about 60 miles one way. I figure if he wants to end his time early than he should be the one to pay for the transporation costs. My ex has canceled his time due to having no money for gas and/or food. I have no problem with that except that he waits until the day of pick up to tell me he can't take due to lack of funds. I can't figure out why he waits til the last minute, was he expecting cash to fall out of the sky? He works and knows when he gets paid and at the age of 40 should be able to budget his money. He lives alone and as far as I know is not dating, does not have a car payment, very cheap rent, etc.
My BF has to do all the driving, 70 miles one way, every Sunday to see his son for 4 hours. BM will not even pick baby up from his grandparents house which is 15 minutes from her house unless we ask her well in advance. BF will, hopefully, start getting BS 6 months for overnights in late November (after he turns one) and then BM will meet BF about half way. BM stated that since BF moved, sheowill not be punished further by having to do any driving. Funny, BF did not punish BM by moving. Keep in mind BF moved before parernity was extablished for baby before baby was even born and he moved for a job. BM had numerous affairs and BF was 95% sure the child was not his.