During the summer months, many families fill up the car and head off on the open road to visit locations in other parts of the country. While this does provide for a relatively cheap summer family adventure, that doesn’t mean that it’s free of costs, either.
Here are six strategies that you can use on road trips in order to save a great deal on the cost of driving and other expenses along the way.
[See: 12 Frugal Ways to Save on Vacation.]
Fill up your tires to the maximum recommended level before you leave. This is perhaps the most cost-efficient tip that you’ll find anywhere, considering that air is absolutely free and properly inflated tires dramatically improve your fuel efficiency.
All you have to do is stop at a gas station that offers free air and add enough to each tire to match the maximum recommended amount of air as listed on the side of the tire or in your owner’s manual (usually 35 pounds per square inch). A simple gauge — usually for sale at any gas station for a buck or two — will help you measure the level of air in each tire.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, for every PSI drop in pressure, a car’s gas mileage will worsen by 0.3 percent, and properly inflating your tires can improve gas mileage by up to 3.3 percent, which can save you money on a long road trip where fuel costs will easily escalate into the hundreds of dollars. Not bad for a task that takes just a few minutes and costs nothing.
Plan your fuel ahead of time. As you’re traveling from state to state, you’ll quickly notice that gas prices vary a great deal when you cross state lines. Gassing up on the right side of the border can save you a lot of money, but knowing when to do it is half the battle.
The most effective tool for planning out fuel in this manner is GasBuddy.com, which will quickly help you figure out which points along your trip are the most cost-effective for fueling up. Simply getting gas in the right location can save as much as $10.
[See: 12 Ways to Be a More Mindful Spender.]
Plan around toll roads. Toll roads are another aspect of road travel that can add additional costs to any trip, but many toll roads can be avoided if you do a little homework in advance.
If you use Google Maps for navigation, this is really easy. You can simply set an option that causes Google Maps to avoid all toll roads. Often, when you compare routes, you’ll find that the toll-free route is only a bit longer and saves you a fistful of cash.
Contact hotels directly for lodging. In today’s mobile-friendly era, many people do all of their hotel booking online via sites like Hotels.com and TripAdvisor.com. While those are great options for getting a good price, a bit of legwork can get you a great price.
The trick is to call directly to hotel branches just a few days before you stay and negotiate directly with the manager. You can often get a rate lower than what you will get online because the hotel needs to fill rooms.
Visit a discount grocer each morning. Eating out is a staple of road trips, but it can really add up in terms of cost, especially if you’re feeding a family along the way. With a family of four or five, every meal at a restaurant inches up to $40 at a minimum and goes way beyond that if you’re not careful.
The best solution to this problem is to simply visit a discount grocery store each morning or once every other day and fill up your trunk with food items that can easily be made into meals. Bring along a cooler to keep items cold and some silverware and maybe a few plastic bowls.
For example, one can easily buy a gallon of milk and a bunch of mini boxes of cereal for breakfasts, along with a loaf of bread and some cheese and deli meats and a condiment for lunch. Doing that shaves a ton of expense off of the food costs for a day and still allows you to eat dinner wherever you’d like.
[See: 10 Money Leaks to Shut Down Now.]
Use rest stops to your maximum advantage. If someone needs to use the restroom, a rest stop is almost always a more cost-effective place to stop than a gas station. In many states, rest stops feature clean bathrooms, free water, free Wi-Fi (which can be very useful if you don’t have unlimited mobile data) and free maps, and if you really want a snack of some kind, they do offer vending machines with goods at reasonable prices.
Compare that to a gas station, which rarely offers free water or free Wi-Fi, where you have to buy the maps and where the beverages and snacks are going to be quite pricy.
Smart choices on a road trip can end up saving you a ton of money along the way, just by trimming a dollar here and a dollar there with simple replacement choices and wise decisions. Have fun, and enjoy that extra money in your pocket!
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