Is saving money always worth your time?
In most cases, I am all for saving money and paying less for things if possible, but occasionally I think it is just not worth it. Yesterday gas prices jumped from around $3.56 to $3.75 a gallon at most stations around my area. I noticed the jump early in the day and got gas at a station that had not raised the price yet. It was busy there, but not horribly crazy busy.
Later in the day after the local news stations had a chance to hype the price rise and more stations adjusted their prices, I noticed in particular a small gas station that I drive past a lot was still at $3.56. This station has maybe 6 pumps and had a line out into the street going both ways into their enterances. Therefore, you have a line of cars burning gas to save money on gas, not to mention the cost of people’s time to wait just to get into the station.
Lets think about how much they are saving on their gas for a moment. If their gas tanks can hold:
So unless you have a large vehicle such as an SUV with big tank, you will not really be saving a huge amount of money. Besides, if you do have that large a vehicle, chances are you have more issues with gas mileage that would affect your savings than a change in the gas prices.
Also, if you were to go down the road a few miles, another gas station had $3.67 a gallon, a jump over previous prices, but now on that 33 gallon fillup, you are saving only $3.63 by going to the cheaper station but there was no wait at the $3.67 station.