Cheaper Than Cheap Tip Of The Week #5 : Save Money On Gas The Creative Way
“Cheaper Than Cheap†is a recurring tip series about frugality. The idea is to provide potentially helpful frugality tips that border on fanaticaor fictitious to the point of being humorous. Love them or hate them, let’s hear what you think. Tip #4 was on Earn Free Money By Reusing Bags At Grocery Stores.
This tip is all about getting creative. Consider the picture. This car’s single owner a got serious about cutting down her car’s weight. You could also consider removing extra weight from the trunk, removing extra seats, and even the extra cds and chapsticks you don’t use. Less weight equals higher gas mileage.
Filling your tires with nitrogen is creative, but the jury is out whether it makes fiscal sense. I head to Costco, and they put nitrogen in your tires for rotation and new purchases.
The final tip is to be creative with how you time and plan your travel. Traveling at non peak traffic hours saves gas, but that isn’t very creative. I am talking more about planning ahead and stopping at the grocery store and the bank at the same time rather than making two trips. You could even consider timing you trips with neighbors, so that you can pick a few small things up for each other and avoid the quick trips for one or two things.
I’ll give one final example of how I was creative. The Happy Rockette usually travels home(1.5 hours away) every other Thursday and this particular Thursday we had planned a surprise birthday party. I was going to leave for work early and drive up separately and surprise her. Instead, I left for work as usual and stowed myself in the trunk of the Murano. Presto $20 in gas saved, cramped legs, but boy was my wife surprised!
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The problem with frugality is that it makes you cheap. So even if you were to save a million dollars you would still be cheap. I’m all for saving money when it makes sense but Gas prices are something we all have to deal with. At some point you have to accept it rather than fight it in my opinion.
That is an exceptially unique way to save some gas! Dedication at it’s finest!!
What did your wife think of you hitching a ride without her knowing?
Well I suppose that if you did have less weight in your car that it would end up saving you some gas. The creativity is definitely there, but then again in the world we live in today who actually would spend the hour making their car lighter by taking out all the junk they have laying around in it. 🙂
-Scott
Gas prices are making people crazy. The only downer is that it is going to get worse. My suggestion is instead of trying to save money on gas figure out a “creative” way to make money from high gas prices.
hope that inspires some creativity!
I am not sure that how much we can save but I don’t like the cheap lifestyle. Perhaps I have spent 20 out of 35 years in a cheap atmosphere. We are 6 siblings of a careless father. Now I spend a lot but I still can’t suppress my habit of frugality.
Great post. Now I know why my car eats much more gas than it is supposed to – I have too much junk inside. Maybe I need to do some cleaning tomorrow. lol
I totally support this frugality idea! I like the saying as ” Cheaper than cheap” so much.