It takes a little effort, but every cent adds up!
I’m not sure we’ve ever actually dedicated significant time to saving money on gas, but with our upcoming road trip, we feel it’s pretty necessary.
The best options we’ve found include either Apps, Credit Cards, or Fuel Reward Programs.
If anyone has more suggestions, please leave them in the comments section below! 🙂
Apps
The one app we’re sticking to at the moment is GasBuddy!
We’ll probably be using this the most, and in conjunction with each of our other methods!
If you don’t know how GasBuddy works, you can go here to check it out.
Basically, you enter your location, or use GPS, and it gives you the latest (and lowest) gas prices in the area.
Credit Cards
Nest we’re evaluating our credit cards to identify potential savings.
The important things for us are:
– Fuel cost savings
– No fees
We currently have the following two cards (both of which I feel are pretty satisfactory for fuel savings):
- Chase – Freedom Card: 5% cash back in rotating categories (only on the first $1500 spent).
Each quarter (3 month period) has a category which you get 5% cash back. The category for the first half of our trip happens to be gas!
We’re really lucking out here, as 5% is great! The problem is we’re going to quickly hit the $1500 cap, dropping us to only 1% cash back; for that we’ll need another card…
You can find info on the Chase – Freedom Card here.
- Chase – Amazon Prime Visa Signature Card: 2% cash back on all gas.
We don’t get as much back from this card as we can with the Freedom, but it’s 2% all year round, no limits, period.
Our Freedom cash back will hit it’s reward limit quick, dropping the reward to 1% cash back. We can use our existing Amazon card to get some extra savings without having to open a new card.
Here’s Amazon Prime Visa Card info!
It’s possible to get cards with a 3% savings, but we feel the 2% us adequate enough to not open another card… for now at least.
Fuel Rewards Programs
These are a little difficult because they’re base on fuel brand or gas station chain.
Our trip will take us to every single state, and there isn’t always a Mavrik around.
To cover as much ground as possible, we’re signing up for the following reward programs:
Shell Fuel Rewards:
This works by linking your existing credit card to your shell account.
The program starts you off with a $0.05 / gal discount every time you fuel up at a participating Shell station.
You can also link a credit-card to automatically earn larger discounts through online shopping/restaurants/etc anytime that card is used.
BP Driver Rewards:
When fueling up at a BP station, you earn $0.10 / gal off for every $100 spent, or you can simply take $0.01 / gal off at every fill-up.
More details can be found here.
Speedway Speedy Rewards:
For this one you simply spend money on gas or products at participating gas stations and you earn points which can be redeemed for gas discounts or other misc things.
Mavrick – Adventure Club Card
We have these gas stations locally, so we were already members of their rewards program.
The biggest benefit is the $0.02 discount on gas, all day every day with no limit.
Take a look for yourself here!
The search continues
We’re continually looking for ways to save, and will update this post with what we find!
Help us out!
If you know of a great way to save in travel costs while on the road leave us a comment below!!