How to Spend Less on Gas in One Easy Lesson!

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.

One of the easiest and most basic methods is smart shopping for gas. If you were buying a camera you would shop around for the store with the lowest price. For some reason most of us were trained to treat gas differently. You probably buy gas where it is convenient regardless of price. That is what you need to change.

As with any other item you want to save money on, you need to shop around for the lowest price for fuel. You must keep in mind though, that if you use 12 gallons of fuel to find the lowest priced station it will be counterproductive. The idea is to do the shopping consuming the least amount of 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.

The American Automobile Association has done studies that show the average cost to drive a car is about 51.7 cents per mile. That is based on data for cars so the numbers for SUVs and trucks are higher. At 51.7 cents per mile every three miles you drive to find the lowest price gas station could be costing you more than $1.50.

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 best way to find the lowest price stations is to do so during your normal daily driving routine. If you do that you will not be using any extra gasoline. Have a small notebook with you or in your car. When you see gas stations that have good prices indicate the location in the notebook.

Later, when you have time to compare prices in your notebook, you can decide where to stop for gas during your normal driving routine. By doing that you will find better prices but will save all the gas you would have used if you had driven around looking. You will have been able to take advantage of the best gas prices and will not have used any extra gas to do it! The result is a real savings on your fuel purchases!