15 Real Ways to Save Money on Gasoline

As the ever-rising price of fuel puts a serious dent in consumer budgets (and summertime vacations), it’s a good time for remembering good advice from the past as well as new advice for the present on how to keep your shoestring budget from being hopelessly busted.

1. Mass Transiting
If you live in a city or suburb with access to mass transit, USE IT. The cost of bus, train or subway fare is less than the cost of gasoline plus wear-and-tear on your vehicle for those same miles. Plus, if you can test on the means criteria, you can get subsidy for mass transit to and from work every day.

Plus many cities offer “express” transit from suburban hubs to the inner city (bus main depot and transfer station). This means the bus doesn’t stop every 4 blocks along the way, and you can get to work or home often in about the same time it takes to commute in your car during peak traffic hours (the express buses generally use less congested routes).

2. Carpooling
Carpool to and from work if you can. Big employers often have bulletin boards in the break room where people can request for carpooling, and many metropolitan areas provide relatively ‘safe’ long-term parking lots along freeway entrances reserved for carpoolers or express mass transit. This means the people you’re pooling with don’t have to pick everyone up at their homes, but can just pick up and drop off the participants at one location. Regular buses stop at these locations as well, so you can bus to the pick-up and home again.

Carpooling requires out-of-pocket expense just like mass transit does (unless your employer happens to provide the van and gas). It is as cheap or cheaper than driving yourself, as everyone shares the costs. Even if you share a ride with a single co-worker living nearby your costs go down by half.

This requires firm work-scheduling so your participation doesn’t get screwed by your petty tyrant middle-management boss, but many workplaces are beginning to understand that unless they want to give employees a big enough raise to cover transportation inflation, they’d better be accommodating. Some localities offer municipal bulletin boards on the ‘net that allow you to hook up with others who live and work in your area (but not the same place) for carpooling.

3. AC is for Wimps
When you do drive to and from work (even with a pool), turn off the AC. If you don’t live someplace where it’s 80+º at 8 in the morning and 80+º at 5 in the evening, you don’t really need it. Use the interior vents instead to circulate outside air. You’re all sitting down, you can handle less than 80º in comfort with some moving air. Keep the windows up on the highway too. These both reduce drag on the vehicle and its engine.

4. Drive Slower
Drive 55 on the highway rather than 70 (or more). The bad old double-nickel does consume a lot less gas.

5. Limit Acceleration
Unless you’re merging into at-speed traffic, watch your acceleration and braking. Acceleration consumes the most gasoline, and quick-braking (unless necessary) shifts the burden to acceleration later. When you see a need to slow down, take your foot off the gas. Slow braking often helps you avoid having to stop altogether, or accelerate fast (such as at stoplights).

6. Cruise Control
On the highway, use your cruise control. It saves quite a bit of gas and reduces heavy acceleration as well as heavy breaking.

7. Hot Gas
Don’t buy hot gasoline. Purchase your fuel during cooler times of the morning or evening, you’ll get more for the bucks. Always pay attention to the sign price, you can save up to 5¢ per gallon just by buying across the street instead.

8. Buy Less
Don’t “top off” your tank, it’s a waste of gas. Plus, less weight equals better mileage. If you fill up, stop at the first click and don’t keep pumping. If you’ve a 15-gallon tank and need just 10 for the week, only buy 10 gallons during the week. Park in the shade when you can, as heat will expand the gas in your tank. If you can’t park in the shade and don’t want to use the AC (less gas mileage), open your car doors or windows for awhile to let the heat out before driving off.

9. Don’t Be Idle
Limit your idling. You must idle at stoplights, but not in the drive-through at Taco Bell or bank. If it’s going to take more than a minute to conduct your drive-through business, turn off the ignition and restart when you’re done.

10. Get Some Exercise
If you live within a mile of your work, walk or ride your bike. You’ll get good exercise (and only slightly wet when it’s raining if you’ve a raincoat, galoshes and umbrella) and not use any gas at all. A bicycle can be reasonably ridden 5 miles to work in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have to ride through town (lots of stoplights) or have a particularly lovely road between here and there.

11. Have Some Fun
If you live 5-20 miles from your work and can’t regularly carpool or ride mass transit, consider purchasing a motor scooter. There are some really nice ones on offer these days, can be had for not too much money if you can justify the costs, and often get 75-120 miles per gallon of gas. Plus, they’re fun!

12. Move On
You could consider moving closer to your work or getting a job closer to home. Of course, this presumes that you are job-secure enough to make it worth your while to sell your house at a loss and buy another, and/or employable enough to get a well-paid job anywhere, even in a recession-to-depression economy. In which case you can probably afford to drive yourself to and from work all by your lonesome and wouldn’t have to consider these options.

Once you’ve figured out a way to save on gas and car expenses getting to and from work every day, consider how you can save on other trips in your vehicle…

13. Keep a List
Get a dry-erase board and put it up somewhere right near the ‘fridge. Whenever someone in your family notes that some regular foodstuff or extra (paper towels, toilet paper, shampoo, facial soap, whatever) is running low or you’re out, they can write it down. Then make your list before you go to the store. This will avoid frequent ‘hops’ to the store at odd times just to pick up an item or two.

14. Shopping Day
Plan your meals weekly. This means sitting down and figuring out what your family will have for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a full 7 days. Will that box of cereal last that long? Have you enough ingredients for eggplant parmesan as well as burritos and Spanish rice? If everyone takes their lunches (saves lots of money!) to work and school, make sure you’ve got all the ingredients for everyone every day for the week. This means keeping the kids from eating the “Lunchables” for snacks at home, so also make sure you’ve after-school snacks in stock as well. If you only go to the grocery store once a week, you’ll not be wasting half a tank of gas during the week ‘hopping’ to the store.

15. Group Shopping Day
If you plan ahead, you can do all your grocery store shopping and general running-around errands on Saturday. If you’re sociable, you can probably find a neighbor or two who will think your plan is brilliant, and who will plan ahead too. That way you can share the Saturday run-around duties, as well as vehicle and gasoline costs. Plus, you’ll only have to do the driving once every two or three weeks!

A psychological issue I’ve found with this planning ahead stuff is that some people fool themselves into believing they’re NOT spending much money if they drive to the store once a day to pick up an item or two or three, instead of going once a week and spending what can amount to $200 at a time. It’s a quirk of numbers that should be examined closely for all factors including gasoline, because in the end, that daily trip for this-n-that can add $100 to that weekly expenditure.

When you make plans with the kids to see a movie or do some other worthy and fun thing on the weekend, you can consider proximity. Share rides to the mall with other families in your neighborhood. Do Dollar Movie & Pizza Night on Friday instead of Saturday. Sign up for a video/DVD rental service, have the kids invite their friends, cook up some popcorn and have sodas on hand, arrange the chairs and hold “movie night” at your house! I’ve found it fun to do all-day (or all-night) spectaculars – all the Rocky movies, all the Star Wars movies, all the Arnold movies… whatever you like. One right after another with intermissions. For the all-nighters I put the eldest in charge of snacks and programming, move the equipment to the garage or basement, throw in lots of pillows and blankets, let them have a fine sleep-over.

The best bet for the cash-strapped or just the thrifty person is either to garage your vehicle or share the costs with others. The money you save might pay for this month’s grocery price-hikes! And remember to buy local whenever you can, particularly produce in-season. You can go to the area farmer’s market BEFORE going to the grocery store that week, and any neighbors you share the ride with will learn what’s cool about farmer’s markets.

The cost of living won’t be going down, even though our incomes may not be going up. If you’ve good ideas for saving money in these areas, please contribute in the comments, there may be some truly great ones out there!

Useful Links:

FTC: Saving Money at the Gas Pump
Edmunds: Gas-Buying Strategies
How to Save Money on Gas
43 Gas-Saving Tips

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