It’s no surprise that the cost of Gas has risen considerably over the last 20 years, the statistics below show an increase of around 400%. So what are you doing to actively save money at the pump?

Rise in Cost of Gas over the last 20 Years

There’s a number of websites & applications you can use to help you track gas prices across the USA. Helping you to easily pinpoint the cheapest station & avoid the expensive ones whenever you need to fill up.

How much can you save per year?

Let’s take New York Gas prices for example:

Current Highest Gas price: $2.89
Current Lowest Gas price: $2.51
Savings: $0.38 per Gallon
Average Car Tank Size: 16 Gallons
Fill Frequency: Once per Week

Savings per Year: $316.16

Our pick of Gas Saving websites

GasBuddy

Get your local Gas Prices & compare your state to the rest of the USA. GasBuddy also has a few other unique features:

• Trip Calculator – Calculate how much your next trip will cost you in Gas
• Gas Temperature Maps – Look at the gas prices around the country in a glance (Red is expensive, Green is cheaper)
• Historical Gas Prices
• City & State Averages (South Carolina is the cheapest & California is the most expensive)

BillShrink

BillShrink works slightly differently, it asks you to put in your most commonly travelled routes (i.e. the commute to work) & plots on a map the cheapest route to take & also the cheapest petrol station to fill up on the way.

FuelFrog

FuelFrog is designed to help you track your Fuel usage over time. Simply add the details whenever you fill up at the pump & you can view interesting stats over time. It’s also key to identifying if your car’s efficiency is deteriorating over time which might indicate you need a service!

MyGallons

MyGallons allows you to pre-purchase fuel as today’s prices. Meaning that next time the prices increase you can still fill up at the prices on the day you pre-purchased. Membership costs $39.99 a year & you can expect to save $150 or more if you drive around 15k miles per year.

GasPriceWatch

GasPriceWatch is integrated with Google Maps to give you a birds eye view of the latest Gas Prices wherever you may be.

MotorTrend

Motortrend has a nice widget that you can install to get gas prices directly from your desktop.

Did you know you can also save fuel by banking online? or save money by watching less tv?

If you’re a freelancer then you undoubtedly have to send invoices each month. Hopefully you’re not still doing this manually but if you are then open your eyes to the world of online invoicing. Online Invoicing applications can easily communicate in with your applications such as Basecamp, Paypal & can even act as a payment gateway so your invoicees can pay you directly.

Depending on how many invoices & clients you manage the monthly cost ranges from nothing upwards & chances are that if you’re sending more than 5 invoices per month you’re probably able to splash out on a higher plan

LessAccounting

Price: From Free to $24 / month
Free Trial: 30 Days

Less Accounting Demo Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

FreshBooks

Price: From Free to $149/ month
Free Trial: Yes – Manage 3 clients per month Free

Freshbooks Demo Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

BlinkSale

Price: From Free to $49 / month
Free Trial: Yes – Send 3 Invoices per Month

SimplyInvoices

Price: From Free to $25 / month
Free Trial: Yes – Manage 5 Templates

CashBoard

Price: From Free to $140 / month
Free Trial: Yes – 2 Active Projects

SimplyBill

Price: From $5 / month to $25 / month
Free Trial: 30 Day Free Trial

InvoicePlace

Price: From Free to $20 / month
Free Trial: Yes – Send 5 Invoices

Bamboo Invoice

Price: Free! It’s Open Source

InvoiceMachine

Price: From Free to $48 / month
Free Trial: Yes – 3 Invoices per Month

Zoho Invoicing

Price: From Free to $35 / month
Free Trial: Yes – 5 Invoices per Month

SimplifyThis

Price: From $9 to $29 / month
Free Trial: 30 Day Free Trial

InvoTrack

Price: From Free to $45 / month
Free Trial: Yes – 2 Invoices per Month

Intuit Billing Manager

Price: Free for Unlimited use!

WinkBill

Price: From Free to $39.95 / month
Free Trial: Yes – 3 Invoices per Month

CurdBee

Price: From Free to $5 / month
Free Trial: Yes – Unlimited Invoices! Some limited features.

BillingBoss

Price: Free!

Which of the above is your favourite Invoicing solution & why? Let us know!

This post is part of the 100 Ways to Save Money online series.

Before we start, here’s some interesting stats on TV usage in the USA, published by the Media Education Foundation:

1. 50% of US households have three or more TV sets
2. In the average US home, television is on for 7 hours and 40 minutes a day
3. The average American watches more than four hours of television a day
4. On Average, children in the US will spend more time this year in front of a TV (1,023 hours) than in school (900 hours)

It’s no surprise that each & every one of us wastes a significant amount of our personal time watching TV. Reducing the number of hours you watch per week can have a significant impact on your finances, here’s how.

Cable TV / Satellite TV

The average Cable TV Bill in the USA is around $60 – $100 / month. If you think about these costs over the course of a year it adds up to between $720 – $1,200.

It’s very possible to live without it now that many of the big players are moving online & providing TV Shows (Hulu) & Movies (Netflix) online.

Time

How much do you value your own time at? One of the important things that will help you save money is really putting some value & importance on your free time. This is a technique that businesses often use to decide whether it’s more cost effective to outsource a particular job than it is to do it inhouse. If you own your own business is it more cost effective for you to be working on that than watching TV?

Electricity

It’s no surprise that watching TV uses electricity, the average TV uses between 100 – 300 watts which adds up to $30 – $50 per year if you have the TV on for 4 or more hours per day. Plasma TV’s use slightly more electricity then LCD TV’s (around 60 watts more for a 42″).

To calculate your own usage check out Michael’s excellent Electricity Calculator.

Commercials

Believe it or not an hour of TV has around 20 minutes of commercial breaks, not only is this an incredible waste of time but also it means that we are exposed to hundreds of ads everytime we sit down to watch TV for more than 2-3 hours. Believe it or not commericals can have a massive impact on how we live our lives.

• Commericals make you shop more
• Commericals expose you to fast food
• Commericals expose you to sales & promotions
• Commericals sell you things you don’t really need
• Commericals show off the latest gadgets when you probably don’t need to upgrade

Productivity

Spending 4-7 hours a day watching TV can have a serious impact on your productivity. Try spending this time doing something else like starting up a side business, helping your children with their homework or going to networking events to broaden your horizons.

Here’s a list of things that you could do instead of TV:

• Spend more time with your family
• Start up a second business
• Go back to university or take evening classes
• Go to more networking events
• Take care of your finances to make sure everything is in order
• Do some work to your house to increase the value

This post is part of the 100 Ways to Save Money online series.

Taking the (what may seem) giant step towards banking online can help you be much more efficient with your time & finances. However many people are apprehensive about the security & still often feel comfortable with banking at the local teller.

Banking Online saves you time

We all know that time = money, one of the principles that we’ll be talking about over the coming series is that you need to put a level of importance & value on your personal time. Let’s say for example you work out that your time is worth about $50 / hour & taking that trip to the bank to do what you need to do takes you 90 minutes. Then technically you’ve just wasted $75 of your own time, that perhaps could have been used better elsewhere.

Spend Less Money on Petrol

The local bank branch could be anywhere from 1km to 20km from your house. Lets take an average of around 3km (6km round trip). This equates to around $2.30 per trip. If you visited the bank every week that’s an extra $127 per year.

Be More in touch with your expenditures

Instead of waiting until your montly bill comes in you can instantly be across the balance of all your accounts, this can help you identify issues with your money management techniques & budgeting quickly.

Save Money in ATM Fees

If you’re constantly withdrawing money to pay bills from the ATM you might well be paying a small surcharge each time. This money adds up ($0.50 surcharge on $20 for example is 2.5% of the withdrawl!). Using your online bank account to pay these bills completely replaces the need to even pay with cash.

Rack up your Rewards Points

A good technique to use is paying all your bills (even your rent if you can) with your credit card. This means that not only do you save money by not going to the bank & not taking money out of the ATM but you also get something back in return for paying your bills online. Some cards can earn you up to 5% cashback so do the math; if on average you spend around $12,000 p/a on bills you could get back $600.

Get more Interest

The quicker you get your money into the bank the quicker you can earn interest on it. Simple. If you’re still getting paid cash then you may consider getting your wages deposited directly into your bank account. Think about it like this, if you get 6% interest on your money & it takes you 4 days every month to get around to putting your wages in then that’s 48 days per year that you’re not getting 6% on your wages. It may not sound like much but over a lifetime it adds up to thousands.

Money is Safer in a Bank Account than at Home

If your house is broken into & you keep your savings under the bed in a shoebox then you risk losing everything. Transacting online helps remove that threat & even with many of the scams out there banks will still reimburse you of any losses through online banking fraud.

Always be careful online of the sites that you visit, never ever trust clicking on a link to your bank. ALWAYS type the URL intro the browser in order to be completely safe.

Save Money online with cheaper Cheques

On average your bank will charge you around $25 – $30 for 100 cheques. You can order cheques online around 100% cheaper, see Checks in the Mail (800-733-4443) or Checks Unlimited (800-210-0468).

Save Time & Integrate with your Account Software

Another great feature of online banking is that normally you can integrate all of your statements with any accounting software or service that you may use (we’ll be featuring these in a later post). This can save you a huge amount of time when doing your taxes at the end of the financial year.