Most of the people are overwhelmed by the rising gasoline prices. There are ways to reduce your overall expense of gasoline purchases even before you consider of changing your driving habits or thinking of selling off your car. You will need to search for the gas stations that sell gasoline at the lowest prices.
It’s pretty obvious for most of the people that they will purchase gas from stations that is most convenient according to their location. Let’s say if you are buying a camera, you will shop around for the store that offers the lowest price. But when it is time to buy fuel, most of us treat this purchase in a bit different manner. You will probably buy gas from such a station that is located close to your home or office address, regardless of the price.
When your gas tank is running low on fuel, you will immediately stop your car at that gas station that you can spot first. Chances are that this gas station will be selling gas at a higher price than what you have been generally purchasing from your local gas station.
One of the best ways to find a gas station that has the lowest price is to search on the internet. There are a number of sites that provide information on local fuel costs. Here are a few: Gasbuddy, AAA, fueleconomy.gov and gaspricewatch. You can find more if you just search Google for gas prices.
Doing an internet search for the lowest gas prices is a very good idea because you don’t have to drive and burn fuel. When you have located the exact store that offers the lowest price, go to that location and refill your tank.
Studies conducted by the AAA show that the cost of gasoline is approximately 51.7 cents per mile to operate your car. So if you are driving three miles to the gas station that offers the lowest price, it will cost you $1.50. That means that if you need to put 15 gallons into your car you have to save about 10 cents for every three miles you drive. If you can find low price fuel by not driving around to find it, for every three miles in travel you have eliminated, you have gained 10 cents per gallon.
It’s very important to keep the gas station close to your location. If the best prices are 6 miles away from your closest station, you would have to beat the price of the closest station by 20 cents to break even.
Optimize your driving habits. Let’s say if you are going to pick your dry cleaning and one of the gas stations that offers the lowest price is nearby, you should make sure to refill the gas station while you pick up your cleaning.
Internet is a great resource for information. Utilize the internet in the best possible ways in conjunction with a little advanced planning and you will end up making a lot of saving in your gasoline purchases.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Personal Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.