3 Important Ways to Deal with High Gas Prices

If you're like the average person in society today, you are watching the rising prices of fuel with more than a little bit of concern. Most people need to use gas to complete their daily activities and most people are having a little bit of trouble affording to fill up their tanks as prices keep climbing. There are many small things that you can do to deal with high gas prices but these things all fall into three basic categories: reducing use of gas, increasing gas mileage and offsetting the costs of gas. A savvy consumer will pay attention to all three categories of saving on gas in order to be able to minimize the impact of rising gas prices.

The first thing that a smart consumer will do is to start looking at all of the options that are available to reduce the use of gas. There are many different things that we can do in this area including the obvious solutions of using public transportation, biking and walking to avoid use of the car. Combining small trips into one day of running errands is another common way to reduce gas usage. What's increasingly popular is to telecommute part-time to work, switching to a four-day work week and / or moving closer to work to reduce the daily driving to and from the office. Any way that we can choose not to use gas on a regular basis is going to be a good way to deal with high gas prices.

Unfortunately, most of us can't significantly reduce the amount of driving that we do. As a result, it is also very important to learn ways that we can increase gas mileage on our vehicles. The most obvious choice here is to sell your gas-guzzling vehicle and invest in a high-mileage car like a hybrid. However, there are little things that you can do to increase the gas mileage on any car. These things include really simple tips like always keeping your engine in good working condition. They also include more advanced tips for gas mileage like those tricks that are used by hypermilers. An example of this type of tip would be to avoid braking and accelerating by coasting whenever you are on the road. These little tips can add up to a lot of gas saved over the course of a year.

Even if you reduce the amount of gas that you're buying by reducing your driving and increasing your gas mileage, you're still going to have to purchase gas sometimes. This means that it is also important for you to be able to reduce the amount of money that you spend on gas by offsetting gas costs. One common way of doing this is to use gas rebate rewards credit cards to get cash back on all of the gas that is purchased. Asking people for gas gift certificates for holidays is another option. Offering to carpool and getting riders to chip in on gas to places you're driving anyway is yet another way to offset fuel costs.