Tips to Save Gas Money
Free tips to save gas money. Easily lower fuel costs, reduce fillups and improve your personal finance security by increasing savings.
Lower Fuel Costs with Our Free Tips to Save Gas Money
CreditFederal wants to help you save money, and what better place to save than at the fuel pumps? Gas is at record highs and everytime you crank your car or truck (to take kids to school, drive to work, shop, etc), the meter starts running.
Get cash back savings with a Gas Credit Card
Try these 16 gas saving tips:
1. Change your mentality. Consider your vehicle as a taxi cab with a meter running every second. By using this strategy, you'll be more prone to making wiser decisions (such as limiting or combining errands and driving lower speeds).
2. Drive your most fuel efficient vehicle you have, or get one.
3. Keep your car properly maintained and tuned. A poorly tuned engine could burn at extra 25% more fuel.
4. Use steel belted radial tires, which increase gas mileage up to 10%.
5. Don't buy high octane gas unless your car is pinging and knocking or you have a high performance engine which the manufacturer recommends premium gas.
6. Check and properly inflate your tire pressure weekly. Per every pound of underinflation, you could lose up to 6% in gas mileage.
7. Don't fillup. On warm days, gasoline vapors expand and could overflow and be wasted.
8. Don't warm up your car or let is sit idle. The engine warms up faster when driving than it does when idling, and idling wastes about a quart of gas every 15 minutes.
9. Save gas by combining errands into one trip and avoid backtracking whenever possible.
10. Accelerate gently.
11. Watch traffic ahead of you so you can anticipate slow downs, necessary lane changes and to avoid unnecessary stops.
12. Coast up to traffic jams by lifting your foot off the gas pedal instead of approaching at high speed and then using brakes over-necessarily. It takes 20% more gas to accelerate to normal speed from a full stop than it does from four or five miles per hour.
13. Don't drive too fast or too slow. It takes 20% to 30% more gas to drive at 70 mph than 50 mph.
14. Use your cruise control. Maintain a steady speed on the highway. Avoid getting stuck behind slow cars where you have to slow down to their pace and then speed up to pass.
15. Modify your route so you use the most gas friendly route, not necessarily to quickest route.
16. Consider a hybrid. While purchasing a new vehicle may be costly up front the savings in gasoline usage can pay for itself. Combine this with a potential tax credit for purchasing a hybrid and you may be able to save hundreds of dollars a year.
Find Cheapest Gas Prices
In addition to saving money by conserving gas, another strategy is to locate resources that sell the cheapest gas per gallon.
Search online at
MapQuest and MSN Autos
for the Oil Pricing Information Service (OPIS) to track gas prices in your area. MapQuest also lists stations with diesel and alternative fuels.
Websites like GasBuddy.com and GasPriceWatch.com rely on volunteer spotters or the stations themselves to post prices, which may not be reliable nor up to date. If you have a smart phone with a data plan, GasBuddy has a mobile site, too.
If you have a cell phone, you can receive text messages of the latest prices sent directly to you from gas companies. All you do to register is message them your ZIP code. You can; for example, use 411sync.com's service by sending the word "gas" and your ZIP code to 415-676-8397. The services are free, but your cell-phone company will charge you for text messages if they're not included in your plan.
If your phone supports sending a text message to an email address, you can get prices on the go from the list of email addresses below:
If you have a compatible GPS system in your car (like Garmin's nuvi 680 or Streetpilot c580) MSNDirect offers local gas prices (as well as weather, traffic reports and movie times). That service is free for one year.
If you have friends around the city, phone them each morning for their local gas prices. Prices can vary widely, even just a few blocks away. Typically, the nicer and more highly trafficked areas of town have the highest gas prices. This is because overhead; such as property taxes, landscaping, etc, is much higher. Check out the gas prices in the poor side of town.
Avoid buying gas from a station that's visible from the interstate. Drive a few blocks away from the offramp and you may find a significant price drop.
Also avoid garage/repair gas stations. They also tend to charge more than a regular, low profile gas station.
Join a wholesale club, like Costco and Sam's Club which typically offer some of the lowest gas prices in town.
Another strategy is to use gas cards which offer cashback or free gas. Many standard credit cards also offer rebates or cashback which you can use for any purchase, including gas.
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