There are a number of methods you can use to reduce your overall expense of gas purchases even before you consider changing your driving habits or taking any actions on your car. These strategies consist of smart buying and good management of your gas purchases.

A basic and easy method is smart shopping for gas. Look for the lowest priced gas station. Sounds really obvious doesn't it. But it's not. If you were shopping for a camera or radio you would look around for the place with the best price. For some odd reason we learned to treat gasoline differently. You most likely often purchase gas where it is the most convenient rather than where the price is the lowest. That is what needs to be unlearned.

As with anything else you want to save money buying, you need to shop around for the lowest price. Of course you have to be careful keeping in mind that if you use 5 gallons of gasoline to find the lowest price it will be self defeating. The idea is to do the comparison shopping without consuming gas doing it.

Shop around in your neighborhood for the lowest price gas that you can find but don't go too far out of your way. As soon as you start driving the meter starts running. Since the idea is to save money you would be working against yourself by driving around for too long.

Studies done by the AAA indicate that it costs on average approximately 51.7 cents per mile to operate your car. So every two miles you drive to find a better price could be costing you $1.00.

If you have a 15 gallon tank that you would fill (assuming you were empty) to the top, you would have to find a price 10 cents lower than your usual station. Every three miles after that you would need to save another 10 cents. You can see that very quickly over a short distance the potential savings decreases and in fact if you drive too far you could end up spending more money.

The smart way to shop around is to find the low price stations during your normal daily driving. By doing that you will not be using any extra gas. Keep a small notebook in your car. As you see stations that have low prices note the location in your notebook.

Later, when you have time to compare prices in your notebook, you can decide where to stop for gas during your normal driving routine. By doing that you will find better prices but will save all the gas you would have used if you had driven around looking. You will have been able to take advantage of the best gas prices and will not have used any extra gas to do it! The result is a real savings on your fuel purchases!

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Scott Siegel has written a 143 page manual of automotive industry insider secrets on saving gas and dollars at the pump (beatthegaspump.com). Visit us to learn how you can get better gas mileage. Find out how to increase gas mileage. This article is available as a unique content article with free reprint rights.