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"Conscious Prosperity: The Secret to Simple and Lasting Personal Wealth"
Changing Lives Throughout America! The Perfect Gift that Keeps on Giving!
15
tips for beating ghastly gas prices
If
you're fuming over sky-high gasoline prices, join the crowd. But don't play
helpless. Here are the best strategies for finding the lowest gas prices and
making the most of your miles on the road.
By
Des Toups
It
might seem to some people as if $2-a-gallon gasoline is a national emergency
(like the guy down the street who just bought a bright-yellow Hummer), but it
really only means an extra $10 on a 20-gallon fill-up.
Sure, it's money. Sure, it
adds up. But whether the money is going to Exxon or OPEC, your first $40 fill-up
can be a real shocker. Here are a few suggestions for coping:
Get a little
perspective.
If
you're contemplating a trip to the dealership for a car half the size of your
current one, think again. When the price of gasoline rises from $1.50 to $2, the
annual bill for a 15-mpg car driven 15,000 miles rises by $500 -- even if you
don't change your driving habits one bit. It would take years of $500 annual
savings to make up for the bath you're likely to take trading in a gas guzzler
now.
But if you're in the
market already, downsizing a ton or two wouldn't hurt. Do the math. Say your
long commute means you drive 25,000 miles a year, costing you $3,330 a year for
a 15-mpg car. Buy a fuel miser that gets twice the mileage and you'd save $1,600
a year. If that's a lot of money in your world -- as it is for most of us-- a
3-year-old small car might well be worth its $5,000-$13,000 price. (You'll find
MSN Autos' list of the best small used cars under "Related Sites" at
left.) On the other hand, laying out the extra cash for a $20,000
gasoline-electric hybrid is almost never worth the money.
Find the best
deal.
The My Car service surveys 20,000 gas stations across
the country nightly and finds the least expensive gasoline in your zip code.
Signup takes only a minute. You might also try Gas Price Watch (link at left
under "Related Sites"), where a network of "spotters" enters
information on cheap gas.
If you're on the
wrong side of the tracks, buy gas.
The
price of regular in the Seattle area recently, for example, ranged from $1.59 in
a modest suburb to $1.99 in an upscale Eastside neighborhood. Going a little out
of your way to save 40 cents a gallon makes sense. Crossing town probably
doesn't. But if you're in the neighborhood, fill up. Just outside city limits
and just over the county line are two likely places to find cheaper fuel, with
stations taking advantage of the difference in taxes.
Check traffic
before you leave.
Idling
in traffic means you're getting 0 mpg. Most bigger cities have a real-time
traffic Web site. The My Car service you signed up for above also offers
real-time traffic information. Your state's Department of Transportation site
probably has its own traffic page; many radio, television and newspaper sites
do, also.
Consider a credit
card with gasoline rewards.
The
best deal when we last checked was the Shell/Citibank MasterCard, which offers a
10% rebate on gas purchases in the first 60 days for customers who apply by
March 31. The card carries a 14.24% variable interest rate. By the time the card
reverts to its normal 5% rebate, the gas crisis may have passed.
If there aren't many Shell
stations in your neighborhood, here are other recent offerings, courtesy of
Bankrate.com:
BP-Amoco/Bank One
Visa: 3% rebate on gas; 10.40% variable APR
Exxon/Mobil Citibank
MasterCard: 3% rebate on gas; 16.74% variable APR
Citgo/Citibank Visa:
1% rebate on purchases; 16.99% variable APR
Gulf Oil/Fleet Visa:
3% rebate on gas; 18.99% variable APR
Bear
in mind that even a 10% rebate is less than the interest charges on any of these
cards, so watch that balance. And you earn rewards only on the brand of gasoline
that's on your card, so locate convenient stations before you apply.
Buy big-box
gasoline.
Warehouse giants such as Costco and Wal-Mart sell
discounted fuel to their members, sometimes as much as a dime a gallon cheaper.
Make sure you'll use the membership for other things, as the fees (which run $35
to $100) could easily make any savings moot.
Take advantage of
discounts.
Conversely, many independent stations offer a cheaper
price for cash transactions because there's no cut to pay the credit-card
companies. RV owners might join a frequent-fueler program that discounts
gasoline or diesel by a penny or two (which adds up if your motor home gets 6
mpg).
Keep your car in
shape.
An out-of-tune engine, poor alignment or underinflated
tires (check the recommended pressures inside the door or in the owner's manual)
can cost you up to 2 mpg, the American Petroleum Institute says. Change oil and
filters according to the manufacturer's service schedule.
You may have a
flexible-fuel car and not even know it.
Each
year, Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler sell several hundred thousand vehicles with
the ability to run either on gasoline or a gasoline-ethanol blend known as E85
(mainly because they win clean-air points for doing so). Some have "FFV"
badges on them; others are invisible unless you check the owner's manual. But
keep an eye on E85 prices, especially if you live where it's widely available.
(See link at left under "Related Sites.") At some point, corn could
become cheaper than crude.
Don't fall for
miracles.
Special oils, additives, magnets? A waste of money,
says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which evaluates them. Most
produced no result at all; improvements for others were marginal.
Remove the junk.
If
you're not skiing, you don't need the drag of a rack on top (though it does look
mighty sporty). Take a pass through your trunk, glove compartment and back seat;
100 pounds of junk equals one less mile per gallon.
Slow down.
Each
5 mph over 60, the EPA says, is like adding a dime to the cost of a gallon of
gas. Avoid quick starts or a lot of passing. Slow and steady wins the race.
Skip the
luxuries.
Unless
you live in New Jersey or Oregon, where self-service is prohibited, pumping it
yourself is as much as 25 cents cheaper. And if you're feeding your wheels
premium gas, check the owner's manual. If your car doesn't require premium,
you're wasting as much as 20 cents a gallon.
Share a ride.
An
easy way to double your gas mileage is to carpool with someone willing to do
half the driving. Or ride the bus. Every day that you don't drive alone saves
you money.
Try pedal power.
Every
trip on two wheels is money in the bank and good exercise, too.
The sudden run-up in
gasoline prices may be a good thing in a perverse way, landing conservation on
our radar screens in a way that never would have happened if prices had crept up
gradually. Now the key to coping is to make little changes that become habit --
and to keep doing them once pump prices are out of the headlines. And, perhaps,
to look a little more closely at the EPA numbers the next time you go car
shopping.
DebtFREEGuru.Com Tip of the Week for Monday, March 24, 2003
Copyright 2003 DebtFREEGuru.Com All Rights Reserved.
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