Using Credit Card Rewards to Cut Back on the High Cost of Gasoline

Gasoline prices have recently hit an all time high. The other day I had to fill up and had the privilege of paying $3.39 per gallon, and that was for the 10% ethanol blend which is subsidized! The regular gasoline cost a whopping $3.49. In fact, right now only two states have average gasoline prices of less than $3.00 a gallon (New Jersey and New Hampshire.)

Gas probably isn't going to get much cheaper any time soon, so it makes sense that we should try to find creative ways to cut down on the cost of gasoline. There are plenty of things that you can do to your car to improve the mileage, such as making sure your tires are properly inflated, making sure your fuel and oil filters are clean, changing your driving habits and decreasing the weight of one's vehicle. We know plenty of ways to use less gasoline, but there's also a way that you can make the gasoline you do have to buy cheaper. Here's how you can make your gasoline cheaper with the use of rewards cards.

With most credit card rewards program, you'll earn about 1% cash back on your purchases. With some of the store specific cards, you can save all the way up to 5% off gasoline purchases! For example, the Chase BP Visa Rewards Cards will give you a 5% rebate on anything purchased at a BP-Amoco station (including gasoline), and will give you 2% off everywhere else. You'll want to check at whichever gas station chain you visit most often to see what they have for a rewards card. If you can get 5% off gasoline, you just gave yourself a 16 cent per gallon discount at today's prices!

If you don't want to limit yourself to purchasing gasoline at one specific station, you may want to consider Discover's "Gas Card." It will pay 5% rebates on the first $1,200 of gasoline spending. That's all well and good for light drivers who do a typical amount of driving.

Road warriors on the other hand will want to find a card with much higher limits. Chase offers what they call their "PerfectCard MasterCard" which pays 3% back on all purchases of gasoline. It's not as high as Discover's GasCard, but if you do a ton of driving (more than 15,000 miles a year), you'll definitely want to consider Chase's option instead.

Usually store specific cards offer the best discounts on gasoline, but Discover and Chase also offer options which are very appealing. It doesn't take a lot of effort to sign up for these cards, and you can get 16 cents off a gallon per gasoline!