I have been driving a manual transmission most of my life. My father had a brother seriously injured at one point in his life and no one knew how to drive a manual transmission to get him to the hospital so he had to drive himself after losing a fight with a tree. Since then my family had a rule that before you could drive anywhere you had to know how to drive a stick!

When driving a stick the first thing to keep in mind is that the clutch will do it's job if you are using it correctly. What I mean by this, is DON'T rev the engine and then let up on the clutch. This is a great way to burn gas and make your car smoke if you want to do that. Personally from experience it is not recommended.

Another thing that is nice with a stick is that when you see a stop ahead you can take the car out of gear and coast to the stop, using less breaks and less gas. This can also be used on hills if you live in the mountains. Personally I am in FL so I can see stop lights etc very far off. We went to the mountains of NC for family vacation and I was surprised to find that my gas mileage was about the same if not a little higher in the mountains because I was able to coast quite a bit. (A quick note on this one, if you are in the mountains do NOT ride your breaks, you want to pump the breaks or you will glaze your rotors and cause break failure, never a good thing when on a slope!)

Many cars have a "shift dummy" light (this is my own term and I use mine frequently around town!). This light comes on when you are at the best RPMs to conserve gas. Personally I was taught that you want to shift under 2k RPM's. This keeps your gas mileage low, but does have the draw back of you will not have much "umph" behind you by the time you get to the top gear (4th or 5th depending on the car). This does not bother me, but it drives my husband absolutely bonkers!

There are the simple things that you need to do with every car to improve your gas mileage such as make sure that the tires have the correct air pressure, the air filter is clean, that your oil is changed, etc. Driving slower always saves gas, as well as removing roof racks, etc. I would not recomend using any of the gas additives, these are all pretty much useless and a waste of whatever money you do save!

Hopefully some of these tips are helpful! Good luck!