Forgive the lateness of this post. We had to put down our pet yesterday after 16 years with her, so this is late but it's here.
Today's tip: Gas Rewards
Where we are, there are two major grocery store chains that have gas rewards. I've seen it in other places like CA, and have been told several other states do this as well. You usually get 1 point for every dollar you spend, and 100 points will give you a 10 cent reward off every gallon of gas you buy either from them or "partner stores". In our area, we get gas rewards from both Safeway and Fry's grocery stores. Fry's is a Kroger chain, and I believe in CA, Safeway is similar to Von's, but not sure on that. Anyway, they let you have 10 cents off each and ever gallon of gas for every 100 points you accumulate. If a family normally spends $100 per week, they would save 10 cents every week on every gallon of gas they buy for the week. Not a bad deal since I save tons of money at those two stores already. The prices at Safeway are great in their Ecoupon and Just for You programs, and Fry's has the best prices on lots of everyday items if they aren't on sale somewhere else.
The Safeway gas can be bought at either one of their stores that has a gas station attached, or at any Chevron. Their Safeway prices are the same as surrounding places so they aren't raising the price then giving you a discount to get back to normal. There's also a Chevron just down the street from me. Chevron is generally a higher prices brand, but near me there's a Circle K and a QT gas station all on the same corner, so they compete for customers by staying as low as the other two.
The Fry's (Kroger) deal lets you either buy gas from them, which I can do right around the corner, or else any Circle K station. They can be tricky. You can drive by ten of those and every Circle K will have a different price, based on where it is, and if they said anything in the news about rising prices, they'll usually be one of the first to reflect that.
A bonus tip for checking gas prices without driving around needlessly is to go to:
www.gasbuddy.com and enter your area. You can search by zip code, gas station (like Chevron, Shell, etc.), and the site will tell you the lowest to highest gas in your area. It's all run by people like you and me who go to the site on a regular basis and report prices they see. You 'd think that would mean very little entries, but you'd be surprised. Even when we lived outside a rural town, there were entries for the few little stations there. If you use it regularly, report ones near you, or if you spot a great deal, let others know about it. In a city, it's invaluable, because you can compare hundreds of stations along your driving route in just a few moments.
One last note, the points you earn in one month are good for the next 30 days. At the end of the month, the totaling stops and resets to zero on the first of the month. If you don't use what you earned by the last day of the next month, they're gone, no exceptions. Don't try to build up to free gas by spending $4000 over time. It won't work that way. Just shop on a regular basis, and use your rewards as you go. When we were going to be driving to CA for vacation, we shopped almost exclusively at one store, used all the promotions they had going on as best we could, and ended up filling the tank both ways for a lot less than the asking price. In CA, that's very helpful! Some stations make you use your points all at once or not at all. A few rare ones will let you use part of them if you want, it's the owner's choice, but it's hard to find those.
Here's ways to save extra on gas using Gas Rewards:
1. If you go to Safeway or Fry's website, or look through their weekly flyer, you usually see extra gas rewards deals. The most common one is to double your gas rewards by shopping on the weekend. If you spent say just $50, you'd get not 50 points, but 100 points, and you'd qualify for the first 10 cents off per gallon level. You should know alcohol and lottery tickets (and I think tobacco) don't earn points. With taxes on those items being so high, they just can't add those to the program. The double points come and go, so you have to watch for them. Fry's has theirs right now.
2. Gift cards - Since people live so far from family now that moving is common, and job opportunities have people living further from loved ones, gift cards have become a normal, acceptable gift. They're easy to mail inside a card, they're small and lightweight for the receiver to carry around, and it lets the recipient choose a customized gift at their own convenience. There's even cards for online only places like Amazon. Anyway, the grocery stores run promotions pretty regularly, but they change. They may offer double, triple, even four times the gas rewards on any gift card as long as it's a store card and not a prepaid Visa/MC/Amex type of card. This is a great way to save because you can do a little planning ahead of time, and figure out on the first shopping trip of the month, who's birthday, anniversary, graduation, baby shower, etc. will be coming up that month. Get the appropriate gift cards during the specials and you can save big. If you got someone a $50 card, during a 4x rewards program, you'd have 200 points, or 2 gas rewards (20 cents of every gallon the next time you fill up) on top of whatever else you normally buy. At Christmas time, this is HUGE.
3. On the gift cards, if you can figure out places you'd normally be paying with cash or a debit card, get a gift card, pay with that, and earn more rewards. For example, if I know our date night will be taking us to a movie, and dinner at Applebee's, I could buy a card for each worth about what we normally spend anyway. Now I can save on gas, do what I was planning anyway, and it's not like using coupons - people receive gift cards every day. The store is happy to take them since they've already received the money for it along the way. If you'll be purchasing books from Amazon, get an Amazon gift card. Just be careful you don't overspend. That won't save you anything. If you normally buy sheets at WalMart, for example, and you buy a card for Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where sheet prices are double or triple that of WalMart, you've blown your savings and then some. Shop smart. Save more
4. Sometimes you can earn extra rewards on certain items with Safeway's Ecoupons and Just for You program on their website. I sometimes see things like this:
- double gas rewards when you spend $8 in the produce section in a single transaction
- double gas rewards on any O Organics (the store's Organic product line) products within a date range.
- double gas rewards on certain store cards, like itunes, etc.
If you happen to need those things anyway, it's a great way to rack up extra points. So far the deals I've seen were for Organics, produce, and meat, so I don't have to compromise and choose unhealthy items to save more.
5. The last tip is what I call "double dipping". Fry's has another program where certain items every week (and they change) carry Dbacks points. The Dbacks are the Arizona Diamondbacks Major League Baseball team. Here's an example, if I see in the flyer that beef hot dogs are on sale, and they carry Dbacks points, and I know I'll be grilling that weekend with friends, I'll buy a pack or two. If I buy two and they cost $3 each, I get $6 worth of gas rewards, but I also get 6 Dbacks points in a separate pool that runs all season, not just a month. Then I can trade those points in for game tickets, hats, shirts, bumper stickers, and other merchandise. They run a program like this for the Phoenix Suns NBA team too during the season. Just another way to save on fun stuff while saving on gas, and not buying anything you didn't plan on buying.
Hopefully this gives you some extra ways to save, especially if you live in my area. If you don't, check your own local area to see what's out there. This is a very popular program in many areas. You may be missing out. If you've already been doing this, maybe you found a new way to save on it.
