Last fall when my husband lost his job we were doing everything we could to save money, including getting all of our gas from Costco. Now that he is working again and we are back to two incomes, time is a big issue for us. Today I needed to fill my minivan up with gas, but I was torn on whether to take the easy, albeit more expensive way, and fill up at the corner gas station, or drive the extra few miles to go to Costco to fill up.Today thrift won out over laziness and I ended up filling my van up at Costco. Regular gas at Costco was $2.89 a gallon. When I got home I checked www.gasbuddy.com for local gas prices at the corner gas stations. The cheapest price in my area for gas was $2.89. The most expensive was $3.15. The station near my house was $3.11.
So the Costco gas was the cheapest, and the other stations with prices as low as Costco tended to be, not surprisingly, the ones located near Costco. The difference in the gas price per gallon between Costco and my corner gas station today was 22 cents. I bought around 16 gallons of gas, so my savings today from going to Costco to fill up were $3.52.
It takes around ten extra minutes to go to Costco and back for me, plus a little extra gas to get there and back, plus some wait time once I'm there because the line is inevitably longer there than at the corner gas station. So the bottom line is that since I'm self employed and time is money for me, I probably make more money getting more work done and going to the corner gas station than making a special trip to Costco just for gas. However, if I can fill up at Costco on days I'm shopping there for groceries anyway or in the neighborhood doing errands, then it is probably worth the stop. Visit my main site for more ideas on saving money on gas.
