U.S. gasoline prices are the lowest they’ve been in five years. And they feel even cheaper because they come on the heels of the highest gas prices consumers have paid in three decades. In 2012, the national annual average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas—the yardstick for gauging prices—hit a high of $3.77, capping a series of years in which the average exceeded $3 a gallon. Before that, the last time the average was so high was in the early 1980s when, adjusted for inflation, it topped $3.60. That’s why today’s prices feel so affordable. On New Year’s Day, the national daily average was $2.23 a gallon, according to Gas Buddy , a website that publishes real-time prices, and in many places the cost was substantially lower. Nearly 30% of the 130,000 vendors tracked by Gas Buddy across the country, or about 38,200 stations, were selling gas […]