The grocery store where we buy most of our food etc. does a shoppers card that in addition to providing extra savings on groceries, also gives us 10 cents back per gallon of gas/deisel (up to a maximum of 25 gallons) for every $100 in groceries we buy per month, up to $1 maximum savings per gallon, and it's only usable on one purchase.
A lot of other grocery stores have the same or similar deal.
Now my wife an I typically spend less than $400 a month on groceries, so that would mean only $0.30 off per gallon of gas. The car we currently own only has an 8.9 gallon tank which further reduces the benefit.
On the other hand we only use 8-10 gallons a month on average.
So what's a frugal person to do?
Well first off we went out and bought some 5 gallon gas cans, so now we can get the 25 gallon maximum, and that's usually
enough to last us 3 months.
The we time shift some of our purchases. Every three months we buy three months worth of nonperishable items and foods with a long shelf life: cheese, TP, paper towels, etc That adds an extra $100-$150 or so on that month which can push our total purchase that month to $500-$600 (an extra 20-30 cents savings on gas)
We also pay attention to when they have double points days and move as much shopping a practical to those days
The store also does double points on pre-paid
cards for cell phone service, Uber, and even "gift"
cards that can be used to purchase groceries in the future.
I travel a lot for my company and typically use Uber when out of town and I get re-reimbursed by my company.
So, for those who weren't paying attention, this means I get double gas points for Uber trips that my company pays for.
So with all of the above we typically hit around 70-80 cents off per gallon. We then buy a '
gift card' for $100-$150 get the double points and max out the gas savings.
So $1 off on gas that will last us another 3 months and then we do it all again. A little planning and effort on our part and we save $100 a year.
i'm sure many of you could save the same amount if not more. The gas cans alone could probably double the savings for many of you
5
