How Far Should You Go To Save on Gas?

Math and averages below as well as the real secret to saving gas money..

Practically speaking for every cent you save you shouldn’t travel over a quarter mile .25 miles or you are not really saving. Then for 2 cents you can go a half mile but even that is not much savings. If you can save10 cents don’t go more than 2.5 miles, or 20 cents do not go more than 5 miles.

Purchasing 10 gallons of gas each cent you save only saves you a total of a dime or ten cents, 20 gallons 20 cents.

If you car averages 20 miles per gallon and the gas is $3.50 then each mile is costing you about 17 cents. So then if you go 1 mile to save a dime you lose. However if you are buying 50 gallons you gained about 33 cents, or if you car gets 40mpg you gained about 42 cents. As you can tell by now we are not dealing with a lot of money, even in a years time saving 42 cents a week you gain about 20 bucks.

Let’s say you can go 5 miles and save 15 cents a gallon and you are buying 15 gallons with a car that gets 25 mpg. You save $2.25 on the gas but you spend 70 cents to get there and if you are 5 miles out of your way 70 more cents to get back subtract the cost to get it and you saved 85 cents and wasted the 15 minutes or so to go get it. Do that for a whole year 52 weeks and you save $44.20 but it cost you 13 hours of your time that’s only $3.40 an hour savings. I bet your time is worth more than that.

So let’s talk time and money the average person drives 15,000 miles a year at an average of 40mph that means you spend 375 hours a year driving. So if you speed 5mph over (as many do) you will only drive 333 hours meaning you saved 42 hours a year, that’s less than an hour a week or less than 7 minutes a day. According to the EPA and I thinks this is ultra conservative you are spending $.26 more a gallon on gas doing that so essentially that’s costing you $270.00 a year or $6.42 an hour, almost twice what you’ll drive 5 miles out of you way to save .15 cents a gallon.
So how do you save big money on gas.. STOP SPEEDING! Quote from the EPA “You can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 50 mph is like paying an additional $0.26 per gallon for gas.3”

So if you saved 26 cents per gallon and you are buying 20 gallons a week that’s $270.00 a year you save. Yes it’s only about $6.42 an hour of your time but it sure beats driving all over town to save 15 cents a gallon in my book.