Good lord. Is your "gas" only $5/gallon?
To answer the question about "extra cash" - right now, people are buying food. Or electricity. Or maybe "gas" for their cars. Nothing stretches to buying all of these.
Rapidly increasing prices for everything here is leading to "heat or eat" for some people. I could talk about budgeting ability, debt management, etc, but the fact is that prices for everything have risen hugely and rapidly. A full tank of fuel in my car now costs at least twice as much as it did at the beginning of the year. Electricity and gas also have doubled. This has knock-on effects on all needful things delivered to shops and supermarkets, etc. State benefits (unemployment, sickness, etc, and old age state pensions haven't increased and were already very tight for managing on. Just about enough, until something goes wrong. Like the car needing repairs, the children needing new school uniforms, the fridge packing up.
So what I'm doing with some of my spare cash is buying extra tinned and dry food to put into Foodbanks, for distribution to needy people.