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How To Save on Gas Without Changing Your Driving Habits
By: Scott Siegel
There are a lot of ways you can work to reduce your expense of fuel purchases without changing the way you drive. You can utilize a lot of these strategies without the need to modify or service your vehicle. These methods are basic and logical and teach you to treat gas like anything else you buy.
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 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.
Shop around in your neighborhood for the lowest price gas that you can find but don't go too far out of your way. As soon as you start driving the meter starts running. Since the idea is to save money you would be working against yourself 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 ideal situation would be to find the lowest price stations without using any extra gas. The solution is to find these stations during your normal daily driving routine. If you do that you will not be using any extra fuel. Make sure you have a small notebook or pad of paper with you or in your car. When you see fuel at low prices write the location and the price in the 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!
Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info
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