Avoid Wasting Gas By Planning Your Trips In Advance

Soaring Gas Prices

It is sad but true that there is no way we can control the gas prices. They are the end results of big business politics. Even if there is nothing for us to do about the price of a gallon, fortunately there is plenty we can do regarding the miles per gallon we get from gas. What is more, most of the ways of achieving it are very simple common sense methods, and available absolutely free! 

What prevents us from achieving such benefits are mostly our pride and prejudices. Prejudices and misconceptions prevent us from even attempting to improve our gas economics. We presume that if there are really ways of reducing costs on gas, they must be costly, annoying, complicated or insignificant as to render it not worth the additional cost and/or inconvenience.

In such cases of doubt, allow your common sense, creativity and innovativeness to jointly decide the issues. Getting into such a frame of mind would make you more organized and skillful overall in other spheres of life too, giving you the knack of  resolving many other problems that confront us in our day-to-day lives.

Suppose you live far from major cities and you have to trek several miles for purchases of some essentials. In such circumstances would you prefer to drive daily, or do some pre-planning so that you can do it all in one shot? Of course, you would get it organized to do in one day; that is common sense, and it comes easy to you. You can extend the same or similar logic to many other areas to reduce costs you incur on gas by cutting out heavily on your driving needs. Reducing 50% in mileage means 50% saving on gas, hands down!

Calculate Gas Expense For Trip

The above example is only concerning reducing mileage. Now here’s an example where cost per mile is also affected. Go one or two steps further from the above example and plan for not only to pack several things into one trip, but also plan as to exactly where to go and also when (the time) you will go there. Avoid peak hours when you will be compelled to be in traffic jams. Consider a situation where you are stopped about 100 yards away from a traffic light under highly congested traffic conditions.

You start moving forward again at snail pace after the light turns to green, but only to experience the frustration of the light turning red again just as you pull up near the traffic light.  This means many more precious minutes of your engine idling while remaining stationary and burning gas, which pushes up your cost per mile! Avoid driving during such times and consider taking an alternate route to the same destination avoiding traffic jams of such intensity, if not completely.

Finally, make sure you carry a shopping list when you go and that you check off every item as you purchase so that nothing is forgotten, compelling you to go back for that item when you happen to remember it after some time on the way or back home. You know that prevention is always better than cure; so pre-plan your requirements in meticulous details and get into a habit of being highly organized in all spheres of your life.

Is proper planning so difficult after all? If so, consider the consequent costs or the savings of your actions. Don’t give in to your prejudices that easily. Planning in advance is not difficult; it could be even fun!

Resources:
Plan your trip to increase gas mileage and consumptiom
Ways to save money on gas