For those who don't check gas prices before filling up...

Many of you know that I frequent the nifty website www.gasprices.com to find out where I can get the cheapest gas in town. Many of you also probably think it's pretty much a waste that I put such time and energy into saving a few cents per gallon on gas. But I've just run calculations on how much we actually saved over the course of a year thanks to my efforts and here's the rundown:

On average, we save 7-10 cents per gallon when we fill-up by going to the cheapest place around rather than the closest. Over the course of the year we spent close to $2000 on gasoline. Based on my calculations, we saved between $50 and $70 on gasoline this year (or 3.3% of our total gasoline budget) due to these extra efforts.

That may not sound like much, but consider what follows. It costs about $25 to fill up our Protege's tank and we primarily drive the Protege because it gets double the gas mileage of the Trooper (about 370 miles per tank). This being the case, I find it highly unlikely that the extra driving involved in going out of our way to fill-up at the cheaper places accounts for more than the 850-1000 miles per year we didn't have to buy gas for thanks to the cheap fill-up savings we accumulated. Consequently, in my estimation, it was all worth it.

I hope that helps any of you who don't look at gas prices when you go to fill up your car. That extra $70 could buy you any number of treasures, or could help you pay for treasures you've already bought.