Do you tend to buy your gas at the same place most of the time? Do you just get in the habit of always going there or do you look around and compare the prices on a regular basis? I admit it. I've gotten a bit complacent since gas prices are so much lower. The station where we usually buy our gas is the cheapest most of the time, so I tend to just go there. This past week, I noticed the price had jumped up, and not just a couple cents. I was thinking that a gas station I passed a couple minutes earlier was cheaper. Since we still had errands to run, we decided to wait to buy gas and have a look around. Just a few blocks away the gas was nearly 20 cents cheaper per gallon.
I usually tend to go the the same gas station that is closest to where we live but I do take note of the gas prices when I am doing errands. A lot of times the prices are only a few cents difference and I'm okay with that. When the gas price has increased and I need a fill up which is what I usually do then I find somewhere that is cheaper close by. When I say cheaper at least 5 to 10 cents. I allow myself $20 for gas and don't go below the half tank marker. So I have had to bite the bullet and settle for less than a full tank sometimes until the price of gas decreases.
I tend to go to the same gas station which is Kroger because I get money off per gallon with fuel points. I usually have at least twenty cents off a gallon so this makes it cheaper to go there to fill up my gas tank. It helps that it is close to my house too. I am glad that it is not as high as it was last year but I am afraid that once it gets warmer it is going to go up again.
I know people who are always looking for deals on gas all the time. Because they are always delivering produce to lots of different places they have to fill their tanks at least twice a day. They always know where the gas is cheapest and I from time to time extract this information from them. But if a gas station [selling the gas cheaper] is further away, I'd rather buy from the one closest to my home because if the price difference is very small, I wouldn't be saving any money.
I go to the places where I think gas will be the cheapest as long as it is not really out of the way. The station closest to where I live tends to have some of the cheapest prices, but not at the moment. I was in a different city the other day and got gas at the Costco, which tends to have very competitive prices...but when I saw my local Sheetz (convenience store) I saw that the price was not much different, and I could have used my Sheetz card and gotten 3 cents of a gallon making it a bit cheaper than Costco! hmmm.
We have 3 major gas stations here - Shell, Petron, Caltex. We used to patronize Petron because they honor the SM Advantage card where we get points for rebates. Some 3 years ago, the SM card went to Shell so we changed and shifted our loyalty to Shell. The so called small players like Total, PTT, Phoenix and some others have lower gas prices, a few cents cut but we never buy from them because we are not sure of the integrity of their products.
I watch them a little bit closely, but not too much. Other factors are important like like distance. For instance, I can choose to visit places closer to home.
