How to Buy Gas
Introduction
There are many kind of road trips. Mine tend to be a few weeks long, covering a few thousand miles. Usually I stay in hotels, but sometimes I’ll camp or even sleep in the car. Sometimes I’ve travelled with my dog, and other times I’ve been alone.
I take a lot these trips, and in my travels I’ve learned a few tricks.
- Florida - Nov 2023
- Great Plains Roadtrip - July 2023
- Outer Banks - Dec 2022
- Florida / Artemis I - Nov 2022
- Florida / Ellie / Artemis I - Aug 2022
- Ellie’s Great Adventure - Oct 2021
Buying Gas
My Prius gets around 40 miles per gallon which works roughly to 10 miles per dollar. This means I need to budget $100 in gas for every 1,000 miles of the trip.
There are several ways to save money and most of them stack.
- Credit card base earnings
- Quarterly bonus categories
- Card linked offers
- Card linked programs
- Fuel points programs
Credit Cards
Base Earning
Many credit cards offer increased earnings at gas stations.
- 8x Wyndham Business Earner (7.2%)
- 5x Citi Custom Cash (7.5%)
- 3x Citi Premier (4.5%)
- 3x Amex Blue Cash Preferred (4.5%)
Quarterly Spend Bonus
Others still will routinely offer gas stations as quarterly bonus category. The Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex have offered 5x on gas for at least one quarter every year going back more than a decade, usually in summer.
Bank Card Linked Offers
Amex, Chase and Citi all offer card linked offers where you can log into their website or app and activate different merchant specific offers, linking them to one or more cards depending on the terms. If you make a qualifying purchase with the merchant using the linked card, you will get a rebate, consuming the offer for that particular card.
Chase in particular will frequently run offers for gas stations, often available on all of your cards. I currently have offers for 2% off Marathon and 5% of Kroger gas stations.
Visa Savings Edge
VisaSavingsEdge.com is a site where you can link any business Visa once to earn automatic statement credits whenever the card is used at a participating vendor. Of note to road trippers, they’ve been offering 2% back on Chevron gas as well as 4-5% on Wyndham and MGM properties for over a year.
Recommendation
My favorite is the Wyndham Business Earner which would be one of the best credit cards around even if it didn’t earn an astonishing uncapped 8x Wyndham points at gas stations. As a business visa, you can register it at VisaSavingsEdge.com for an even higher discount at some gas stations. I like this because it is close to the best you can do, without
That said, most people won’t want to get a business credit card, and what is important is that you use a card that earns at least 2-3x on gas purchases.
Fuel Points
Many grocery chains have fuel point programs. In the case of Kroger, you get $0.10 off per gallon for every 100 fuel points with a maximum discount of $1/gallon off on up to 35 gallons in a single fill-up.
Normally, you earn 1x fuel point per dollar spent, but often there will be promotions on groceries and especially gift cards where the multiplier can go as high as 5x. So buying any $200 gift card at the right moment, even a Kroger gift card that you immediately use on groceries, can save you $1/gallon on your next fill-up.
If you have a 35 gallon tank, you’ll be saving $35, and it may be worth your while to stock up on fuel points before a trip. You might even buy Kroger gift cards to use for gas using a credit card that earns 3x-5x in groceries bypassing the need for a gas specific bonus.
Personally, I tend to use fuel points at the start and end of a trip, but not during it. A couple factors play into this:
- Kroger locations are rarely convenient to the highway.
- My small 10 gallon tank caps savings at $10 / 1,000 fuel points.
- While travelling, I prefer to fill up well before empty.