This is a quick post for you. It might seem super obvious, but I'll just share what we do. When I first started this series 14 years ago, I gave the same kind of advice as I would now about managing gasoline usage and cutting down on waste there: Combine trips as much as you can, try to reduce how many times you go out shopping or do your regular errands all in one trip, map out the route to be most efficient with your driving. To that, I will only add a couple things. Maybe you already know them.

Check Gas Buddy (we don't have their card, we just check prices on their website)! I don't know if it is useful outside of the United States (I checked, it covers the US, its territories, and Canada), but we check it every time we are going to get gas. We can see which station has the least expensive gas in our area, and map out our gas run to fall in line with the other errands or trips we need to make.

The other thing we do is use points to reduce the cost of our gas per gallon. Both Safeway and Fred Meyer do this in our area, and even when their prices are the same or slightly higher than another place, the points often take off enough money to make it much cheaper. So, check your points and use them.

One last thing is that we use our cruise control as much as we can, and don't brake hard to come to stops if we can help, we coast as much as we can when driving, and use cash if it gets us a discount on gasoline. We do have a gas card at a local gas station chain, and it gives us a four cent discount, but sometimes that is still a higher price than elsewhere, so we still check Gas Buddy. I budgeted $400 a month for gas, and when we had two, and then three, young adult drivers, we had a month or two that were closer to $600 (nobody tells you that your kids will get terrible gas mileage at first), but we were able to get that back down, and even with the higher prices, have been able to keep the $400 budget. We utilize the tools I mention here, and it works for us.

Previous Posts:
Make it at Home
Grocery Shopping
Waste Not, Want Not
Soup
The Celery Stalks at Midnight
Use What You Have
Combining Trips
Storing Bulk Purchases
Turn It Off
Grow Your Own
Buying in Bulk
Gleaning
Entertainment on the Down Low
Finding Fun Locally
Holiday Shopping
Reconsidering Convenience
More Bang for Your Grocery Buck
Preserving the Harvest
Revisiting Kitchen Strategies
Extreme Frugality
Bargain Getaways
Cultivating or Curating Abundance
Making Your Own Snacks and Treats
How Weird Is Too Weird? Things We Don't Think of Eating

Labels: Family, Frugality, Homemaking