Don't pay full price at the pump

Fuel for your vehicle is a large part of anyone's transportation budget. You can spend around $2,000 a year just on gas. It's time to find ways to save on the price of gas without getting a lower quality than you need for your car to run well. Some merchants have made it easy to save, and so have some credit card rewards programs. If you use discount gas cards made available through certain gas stations and credit cards, you can save around $200 a year on fuel expenses.

Some grocery stores have fuel centers as part of the services they offer. If you are a member of their program, you can save money on gas every time you buy groceries. For example, if you have a fresh-values card from Smith's Marketplace, you can get $.05 off the normal price of gas for the area. In addition, for every $25 worth of groceries you buy, you can take another $.05 off per gallon up to $.15 off after the normal $.05 reduction all for buying $100 worth of groceries. For a car with an 18-gallon tank, that's a $3.60 savings every time you buy groceries and fill your tank if the average price of gas is $2.15 per gallon. If you filled your tank once a week at Smith's Marketplace, you could save $187.20 per year if you were also buying $100 worth of groceries every week.

Purchasing a membership at Costco or Sam's Club for around $50 a year can save money at the pump as well. All Costco's and most Sam's Clubs have a fuel station as part of their services, and if you are a member, you can pump gas there. If you look at any Costco in any town in the country that has one, you can guarantee you'll find the lowest advertised price on gas. Costco is generally at least $.10 cheaper than any other advertised gas price, but you have to be a card holding member to take advantage of the savings. If you filled your 18-gallon tank with gas at Costco once a week, you would save $1.80 a week and $93.60 a year without having to spend a single penny on groceries to earn your reward.

Most gas stations brands, like Chevron, offer a credit card with gas savings. Chevron and Texaco offer a joint credit card that when used to purchase fuel gives you $.10 per gallon fuel credit, 3% of your non-fuel purchase at Chevron or Texaco in fuel credit and 1% of non-fuel purchases anywhere else in fuel credit. After you spend a certain amount of money, you can redeem your credits for free fuel up to $300 worth per year. If you get the maximum free fuel per year, you are saving $300 every year to put into your cash reserve.

If you have a credit card already, it may offer a rewards program. Most rewards programs offer you around 5% cash back on fuel purchases, and other cash back options on other everyday purchases like groceries. You can redeem your cash back in gas cards and save money that way as well. The amount of cash back you get per year will depend on how much you are spending, but if you spend $2,000 per year just on fuel and you are getting 5% cash back, that's $100 in free gas from gas cards you could be getting, and $100 you could be putting in your cash reserve, not to mention all the cash back you are getting from your other regular purchases that could be redeemed for gas cards.