Time=Money

People are waiting 90 minutes to get 2.99 a gallon gas in San Fran. They drove from all over to get the uber cheap gas.

It strikes me as rather stupid. How big is a typical gas tank? Mine is 14 gallons. Normally I fill up about 12 or 13 gallons. So one is saving roughly $12-13 minus the extra cost of driving out of your way. Take of $1 and let's just call it $12. By waiting 90 minutes plus whatever drive time out of your way, you're spending 2 hours to save $12. Would you work for $6 a hour? No. But people would spend 2 hours to save $12. This strikes me as rather stupid.

What is weird, however, is that I think people don't tend to be stupid when it comes to rational economic decisions...for the most part. In this case, the best way I can rationalize it is that people drove out of their way not knowing it was going to be a 90 minute wait. Once they got there, the rest of the costs were already sunk and they decided to wait. Maybe their gas tanks are bigger than mine. Say they saved 25 bucks - still not much to save for 90 minutes. Maybe most people only waited for 30 min-1 hr and the 90 minutes was max. I can see trying to save $25 for 1/2 hour wait.

The other rationale is that people are on fixed income and don't make more money by working more. The only way to "earn" more money is to save money and so putting in time saving is like earning overtime that is otherwise unavailable. I can see that.

But you also have to offset the cost of waiting, which is really boring. And not everything boils down to money saved and money earned...