High gas prices really are affecting everyday decisions for everyday people.

Here are three examples I know of:

• We didn’t know gas prices would be this high at the time, but this spring my college-age daughter considered the cost of her commute, along with other living expenses, when she was looking at summer job possibilities. If she had worked as a summer camp counselor in 2008 like she did in summer 2007, the gas prices for weekend trips home eat into her take-home pay. This summer, she’ll be living with her dad and stepmom, working as an office clerk at her stepmom’s company, … and carpooling to work with her stepmom.
• Sarah at Home Life, one of the bloggers at Blogs Monroe, recently moved from Erie to the south side of Toledo. Sarah started to set up a homemaking and self-sufficiency group that would meet in Temperance … but the commute from her new home will be too expensive to do on a regular basis and she’s canceled her plans. I have to admit, a regular trip from Monroe to Temperance would also be a bit much for me since I do not have any other reason to travel that way. But I did plan to go to Sarah’s first session.
• Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and my parents will host picnics and other informal gatherings at their home all weekend. There also is another, unrelated family event this Saturday. Only one sibling out of the seven lives in the same city as our parents. It’s easy to tell, through reading the e-mails going back and forth among the family, those who live close enough for visits are trying to limit the number of drives back and forth during the next two weekends. For one family, that means planning for an overnight stay. For another family, it means “I’ll be here for this event, but not that one.”

Do you have any other examples of everyday decisions being affected by gas prices?