The news was making a big deal about Allstate giving out $20,000 worth of free gas this morning in Warren, because they’re apparently some of the safest drivers anywhere.
That’s nice and all, but people were waiting for hours to get a stupid tank of gas, and people on the radio went on about how the economy is so terrible and this could really mean a lot for people, and so on.
If we assume that time has some finite value, and that a normal car has a gas tank that holds about 15 gallons of gas, and that these cars probably weren’t running on fumes (after all, waiting in line uses a fair amount of gas), and that gas was $3.00/gallon… We can extrapolate that people were gettting ~12 gallons of gas, or $36 worth.
Would you wait in a line for two hours if someone offered you $36 in cash? Better yet, if I said “I’ll give you $18 to sit in your car for an hour, with no air conditioning” (after all, that would involve running your engine and using gas) would you take me up on that offer?
Well, anyway, since I drive a car that gets 17 miles per gallon if I’m lucky, I thought I’d share my savings technique with you all. This is midwest-centric, so you may be out of luck if you don’t have gas stations that do this:
1) Speedway will give you $1 off every $25 you put on a prepaid card.
2) They will also give you $0.05 off each gallon if you have their free rewards card.
3) American Express will give you 5% cash back on gas purchases with a Blue Cash card.
So…
Buy a $50 prepaid card with the Amex card (savings: $2 + $2.40 cash back) then buy gas at the pump, and use the reward card (savings @ 18 gal: $0.90). It takes a minute or two longer, and in the end, you save $5.30.
If you assume gas costs $3.00/gal to begin with (which it did today) and you’re buying 18 gallons (which I do), you wind up paying about $2.05/gallon. And that’s not including the free $50 gift card you’ll eventually get with points, or $0.10/gallon coupons you get if you happen to buy cigarettes there.
So there you go. Uncle Kevin just fixed your problem. Now shut the fuck up about how expensive gas is.
