How to save money on your next Gas Fill Up

The increasing price of fuel is making most of us rethink how we spend our money therefore the following tips will help you how you can save money on fuel by improving your mileage.

Be a More Efficient Driver
- Keep to the speed limit and you will notive that your gas mileage will reduce rapidly if you go over 60 MPH
- Don’t be an aggressive driver. If you don’t speed when you start and stop your car as well as drive at a steady pace you can improve on your mileage up to 5%.
- Don’t let your car sit idly as this is an unnecessary use of gas and creates unwanted pollution.
- Do all your running at one time. When you start and stop your car your will use twice as much fuel then if you were to take one trip and cover the same amoutn of distance when the engine is still warm.
- When appropriate use your cruise control and overdrive gears. Doing this will greatly improve the gas mileage of the car when driving long distances on the thruway or highways.
- Remove any unnecessary weight in your trunk. Even an extra 100 pounds on weight in your trunk can decrease your cars fuel economy by up to 2%.
- If at all possible don’t pack things on top of your car: Loading your roof rack can cause wind resistance and will lower your cars fuel economy by 5%.

Maintenance For Your Car
- Tune Your Engine. Keeping your engine tuned up can increase your gas mileage on an average of 4%. This can vary by the cars current condition.
- Properly align and inflate your tires. This can increase your cars gas mileage by up to 3%.
Keep your oil changed regularly: Use the proper grade of oil for your car and change your oil every 3 months or every 2,000 miles.
-Change your air filters regularly. When you replace clogged air filters you can increase your cars gas mileage by up to 10%.

At the Pump
Refer to your owner manual to make sure what octane level your car needs and try to only use the required levels. For most of the cars out there, regular gas is all that is needed so, unless your engine is making a knocking noise buying the more expensive stuff is just a total waste of your money.
Do your errands all at one time: Taking many short trips and cold starting your engine many times in a row can actually use twice as much fuel as one trip going the same distance when your engine is warm so pick a day and do all your errands on that day.

Miscellaneous
-Carpool. There are many place in cities these days that make it easy to carpool by matching up the commuters. You can also get together with other parents and carpool your kids to school and after school activities.
- stay away from those gas saving gizmo’s. Please be very sceptical about any gadget that is promising you that it will improve your gas mileage. The EPA have tested many of these gadgets and have found that very few actually give you any kind of fuel benefits. In fact, there are some out there that may actually damage your engine and cause excess exhaust fumes.

There are of course may other ways that you can save money however the above list is a great way to start saving money on your fuel costs.