Have Your Gas Card? It Won't Make Gas Cheap, But at Least It'll Be Cheaper!

Well, we've all been watching the price of gas climb precipitously and we keep being told to brace for more. We can each have our own little strategies to try and minimize their impact, including bunching errands into single trips, not idling the car when we stop into the local shop for just a few minutes, stepping off the gas pedal nearing the crest of a hill so we can coast a bit on the downhill side...

One other step you can take is using a gasoline credit card. I wrote about this before, but in a conversation I had today I realized many people still don't realize the potential savings.

There are two kinds of card that give back on gas purchases -- first is the gasoline credit card, which is issued by that company and gives rebates for purchases at their stations. Those can be very handy if you have particular stations near your home/business where you would frequently stop for a fill-up. The other kind of card is a standard credit card with a rewards program that offers some larger savings for gas purchases.

I have two gasoline branded credit cards, Hess and Sunoco, which give percentage rebates when I purchase my gas at their stations. I have a bunch of Sunoco and Hess stations where I travel, so those two cards are usually all I need. And the savings aren't bad. The Hess card which gives me back 5% on all gas purchases at Hess stations (they even had an introductory period of a few months when the rebate was 10%). The 5% was nice enough a couple of years back when gas was around $2.00 a barrel and I was saving 10¢ a gallon -- at today's prices around $4.00 a gallon, I get back 20¢. Now that's not enough to make gas a bargain, but saving about $2.50 every fill-up takes at least a slight edge off.

The Sunoco card gives back 4%, which is also a pretty nice rebate back when I buy gas there(their intro offer was a $20 rebate).

The way these work is a rebate credited onto your credit card statement, which then gets applied against the following month's balance. So if you keep buying gas there, the rebates from prior purchase get applied against the new purchases you make.

My reason for Sunoco and Hess is that the stations are convenient at my location. Other companies also have similar branded cards, each with their own percentages and offers. To get the best savings would probably depend on the stations most convenient near you. After all, an extra percent savings wouldn't be worth it if you had to drive an extra 20 miles to get to a different company's pumps... you'd spend more in gas than the savings would be worth.

The number of cards you apply for is also a matter of personal preference, as far as how many different cards you want to carry while you drive. And it's important to pay off the balances of these cards every month so you don't pay any interest charges that would offset the savings. But certainly having a card that gets you back 4% or 5% of your gas purchases make it worth considering as an option.

Another way of saving which doesn't limit you to a particular brand of gas is a general credit card which offers a heightened rewards level for gasoline purchases. A general card with rewards gives you added flexibility of choice of gas station. The providers of these kinds of cards can vary, and their rewards programs would have different features. Usually the rewards are annual rather than rebates applied against the next month's bill as is done with the branded gasoline card.

Some providers offer special high rewards for gas/supermarket purchases for a short while but then scale them back to 1% later. But there are cards offered by both Discover and American Express Business which give you rewards of 5% of your gasoline purchases. To read more, check out this link at credit card forum.

So if you get one of these cards to use at gas stations and pay your bill in full every month (to avoid finance charges), you can get an effective 4%-5% reduction in how much gasoline hits your budget. And that's not an amount to sneeze at.