Tip 8: Buy less gas for your car

Fuel is a big expense for most people. You can get better gas mileage by changing your driving habits. Avoiding short trips and keeping tires at recommended air pressure are the easiest ways to improve your gas mileage and spend less on fuel. Avoiding short trips takes some planning- for example, if you bring your lunch with you, you don't need to drive to a fast food place to get lunch.

Keeping your tires properly inflated does take some work. You can check your air pressure at each fill-up, or you can get small air pressure gauges that are built-in to valve stem caps. I have these on my car and it makes it easy to tell at a glance if the air pressure in the tires is correct. The indicator appears green if the tires have sufficient air pressure.

Choosing the smallest, most efficient car that works for you when you buy a car is the best place to start on getting better gas mileage. Choosing the right car is a balance between how much cargo capacity and safety you want vs. how much fuel efficiency you want. Hybrid vehicles are a good deal in some cases, especially if you do a lot of city driving.

If you want to improve you gas mileage, a good place to start is to check you gas mileage for your normal driving and then try to improve it from there. Fill your tank and note your odometer reading or reset your trip counter. On your next fill-up, take the number of miles you drove on that tank divided by the number of gallons of gas you used to calculate your miles per gallon.

Checking your miles per gallon every tank is a good motivator to keep trying to find ways to improve your fuel economy. I am so familiar with my driving habits and gas mileage that I can tell the difference when I have extra passengers in my vehicle for even a short trip, or if I made an extra trip driving in traffic.

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