Bespoke Money

(Pun.)
Wow, it has been a long time. All unintentional, as almost every day I have thought of something to post, but then have fallen asleep or into a book as I have (now, finally), segued into a new phase of my life. I now have a very short commute (a little over nine miles, round trip), and last summer's purchase, the incredible gas-saving car. It is not a hybrid, but gets 38/40 easily. I could also, as it turns out, bike to work. So courtesy of Bike Commuter, I plugged the numbers into the mileage/carbon footprint/money to be saved calculator ----under commuter tools---- and assuming that I would be steady, but lazy (I picked 3 days a week for frequency), you'd think with the short commute and the wonder car I would not save much money, but, wow, was I wrong:
Your daily gas savings is $4.95 dollars and 22.85 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your weekly gas savings would be $14.85 dollars and 68.54 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your monthly gas savings would be $59.40 dollars and 274.15 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your yearly gas savings would be $772.20 dollars and 3,564.00 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Sorry. I know that these numbers should be in green. Still, I am greedily impressed. If I add a fourth day, I would save over a thousand a year. A thousand. Now, this is important, because I took a pay cut for a happier life, and in the back of my mind, I've been scheming about how to make up the difference. My new and happier career will be rather all-consuming, so I've been looking at ways of simply cutting costs. Geez S, she cried, Holy Moly. This is really an almost painless way to do better. Now, don't get me wrong: I have a strong love and/or use for new electronics, sushi dinners and lunches, a good drink, dry cleaning, espresso. So I am not in a dire situation at all. Luckily, my question has been about how to maintain my current lifestyle without, if you follow me, cutting back on it. Here, I thought, is a perfect example of how "nickel and dime stuff" can turn quite substantial. It would mean, even with a short commute, that if you did not have a bike, it would pay for itself over the course of a year. So every time I bike to work round trip, I pay myself 4.95 into a special account (or whatever the daily rate is, per the calculator), and by the end of the year, I have quite a premium in addition to shapely calves. Nice.