How To Save on Gas Without Changing Your Driving Habits
There are a number of methods you can use to reduce your overall expense of gas purchases even before you consider changing your driving habits or taking any actions on your car. These strategies consist of smart buying and good management of your gas purchases.
A basic and easy method is smart shopping for gas. Look for the lowest priced gas station. Sounds really obvious doesn't it. But it's not. If you were shopping for a camera or radio you would look around for the place with the best price. For some odd reason we learned to treat gasoline differently. You most likely often purchase gas where it is the most convenient rather than where the price is the lowest. That is what needs to be unlearned.
As with any other commodity you want to save money on, shop around for the lowest price. Of course if you waste 10 gallons of gas driving around to find the lowest price it defeats the purpose of finding the lowest price. The trick is to do the shopping without wasting gas doing it.
You can try to shop around in your local area for the cheapest gas but you shouldn't go too far out of your way. The minute you start driving around looking for good gas prices you start burning gas which adds to your gas expense. Since your goal is to save money you would be defeating the purpose by driving around for too long.
Studies done by the AAA indicate that it costs on average approximately 51.7 cents per mile to operate your car. So every two miles you drive to find a better price could be costing you $1.00.
If you have a 15 gallon tank that you would fill (assuming you were empty) to the top, you would have to find a price 10 cents lower than your usual station. Every three miles after that you would need to save another 10 cents. You can see that very quickly over a short distance the potential savings decreases and in fact if you drive too far you could end up spending more money.
The smart way to shop around is to find the low price stations during your normal daily driving. By doing that you will not be using any extra gas. Keep a small notebook in your car. As you see stations that have low prices note the location in your notebook.
After reviewing the information on pricing and locations of gas stations collected in your notebook, you can decide to stop at a gas station that has been flagged in your notebook to have the lowest prices. Fill up at that station as you will be driving near it in the course of your daily route. You saved all the gas you would use driving around looking. Instead you are following your normal route and still able to take advantage of the best gas prices. The bottom line is you will spend less on gas!
Scott Siegel is the author of a 143 page book of industry insider secrets on saving gas and dollars at the pump (beatthegaspump.com). Visit us to learn how you can get better gas mileage. Find out how to increase gas mileage.
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