Obama’s Emergency Economic Plan Released: Second Stimulus Check & Growth Funds








(Photo: chadwho1ders)


Best Gasoline Station Has Best Gas?

Old Fashioned Gas PumpIn the current world of $4 a gallon gasoline, everyone is looking for an edge. Whether it’s additives that don’t really work or little gadgets that don’t really work, we’re looking for anything that will squeeze out a couple more MPG from the car we already have.

The next logical step is to ask whether the gas at various gas station companies makes a difference. For the longest time, I believed that the gas from Exxon was better than the gas from Costco. I did empirical studies where I saved my gas pump receipts and calculated my average MPG and the Exxon gas did give me 2-3 MPG extra. However, after further research, I believe that my driving behavior and routes had a greater effect on fuel efficiency than the label on the pump.

The gas from one company is essentially identical to the gas from another.

Government law requires that all gasoline certain detergents that help prevent fuel injectors from clogging. This means that all the fancy brand name gas stations and their fancy “additives” are all required and that all gas contains them. Some say that the detergents from brand name companies go above and beyond but my perspective is that you only want the minimum standard, which is required of all gasoline. Why do you want more detergent than you really need? I don’t want more detergent in my gasoline, I want as little as possible because that gives me more gasoline! (I’m only kidding, the added volume in detergent is tiny)

Many gas brands share pipelines. According to a Smart Money article on what Gas Stations Won’t Tell You, Chevron gas stations might sell gas refined by another company like Shell or Exxon Mobil, with the difference between their gas being a quart of detergent added to an 8,000 gallon tanker truck! After a little digging, I found these maps of pipelines in the US and there aren’t that many pipelines. There are certainly as many pipelines as there are gas brands, so the fact that they mix and match isn’t that surprising.

If there was a difference, we’d know about it by now. The power of the free markets is very strong, if a particular brand of gasoline was definitely superior, we’d know. We’d know because it would be more expensive because the higher performance would justify the higher cost. Since there isn’t a brand that exists with significantly superior performance at a higher price, it’s clear that they’re all pretty much the same (and these brands have been around for decades).

If you really want to make a difference, you can save more money by buying the cheaper gas and then adding a fuel injector cleaner with every oil change. I’ve used many a fuel injector cleaners, which you can find in any auto parts store, but can’t really say I can tell. The mechanic friends of mine say that while it can’t hurt, don’t bother getting expensive cleaner, just get the cheap stuff.

Oh, another tip, don’t buy higher octane than you need, it’s a waste of money.

(Photo: ella_marie)


How to Max Out Credit Card Rewards



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 Personal Finance, Retirement 

WIN: Oil Oil Everywhere, Not A Drop To Burn

4 gallons of gas per household per dayAccording to howstuffworks.com, the United States consumes about 400 million gallons of oil a day across 100 million households, or approximately 4 gallons per household per day. If you drive a 25 MPG car, that’s a hundred miles of driving a day. How does your household stack up? You using more or less than your four?

50 Billion Barrels of Oil under GreenlandIf we melt Greenland, we can get 50 billion barrels of oil. Actually, it’s already melting and oil companies already have oil exploration licenses to start poking around in Greenland. So, really we need to do nothing differently. Oh, and I heard penguins and polar bears make excellent soups so let’s melt the ice from under them too.

8485 GM Hybrid Cars Sold General Motors, as of the recent IRS report, has sold a mere 8,485 hybrid vehicles. By comparison, Toyota crushed the 60,000 limit and Honda just recently exceeded it. Ford is over halfway there. GM is, well, slightly slower out of the gate but remember the tortoise beat the hare.

$100,000 Cost of Tesla RoadsterThe Tesla Roadster is a fully electric car made by Tesla Motors. On a single charge, it can travel 220 miles with an efficient of a reported 4.7 mi/kW·h which is the equivalent of 135 MPG. $100,000 is the price of one of the Tesla’s “Signature One Hundred” in all its tricked out glory. Fortune just published an article yesterday about the Tesla.

Have a great weekend everyone!

 Your Take 

Your Take: Do You Carpool?





Test Drove the Toyota Prius

Toyota PriusLast weekend, on July 4th no less, my wife and I stopped by our local Toyota dealership and test drove a Prius. Fortunately for us, neither one of us drives a gas guzzler (I drive a 2003 Toyota Celica and my wife drives a 2004 Honda Civic) and neither one of will need a replacement car for quite some time but with a day off and being in the neighborhood running errands, we figured stopping by would be a fun little diversion. Our friends from New York own a Prius, which they love, and we’ve ridden in it before, but never really “test drove,” complete with salesperson pointing out every last feature. Overall, we were impressed and it certainly would be on the short list of vehicles we’d consider if we were to replace either of our cars.

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Cost Benefit Analysis of GPS Units

Before talk of $4 gasoline (and airlines going bankrupt and charging you to check luggage) dominated the nation’s transportation attention, global positioning system units were all the rage. Now it sounds like GPS units have become more of a luxury good, something you only get it if you are hard pressed to spend your stimulus check (perhaps there’s a second stimulus check coming?). However, I argue that GPS units might be a good investment because it makes your driving more efficient (hopefully). Let’s see, shall we?

Fuel Cost Per Mile

If you drive a 30 mile per gallon car, $4 a gallon for gas means that each mile costs you approximately 13.3 cents. If your car only gets 20 miles per gallon, $4 gas equates to 20 cents a mile. This gives you a baseline for comparison, how many miles do you need to save in order to make one of those units “worth it?” We don’t consider other costs per mile, such as car depreciation and maintenance, because that would introduce far too many factors for our simplistic calculation. If you went through the exercise of calculating the cost per mile of your car, use that figure instead of 13.3/20 cents/mile as calculated above.

Breakeven Analysis

If you get the Magellan Maestro 3200 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator for $131 at Amazon, the unit pays for itself if you can save 985 miles (at 30 MPG, 750 miles at 20 MPG) over the lifetime of the unit. If you assume that the lifespan of the unit is a conservative five years, that’s 197 miles a year, or, 1.31% if you drive 15,000 miles year.

Is it really possible to save 197 miles a year? I think that if you do a lot of driving in areas you don’t know very well, it’s very possible. The class of users that I believe benefit the most from GPS units are real estate agents. What about someone who drives the same commute every day five days a week? Chances are you won’t benefit greatly from a GPS on weekdays but you might benefit on the weekend. If your GPS has integrated traffic, which the 3200 doesn’t (I just picked the cheapest unit on Amazon at the time), you could save more by avoiding traffic trouble spots.

Or, for those who are fans of The Office, strict adherence to the units could leave your car in a lake (after the jump). :)

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Buy Costco Gas without Costco Membership

Costco Gas StationsCostco has since closed this loophole so you’ll need a Costco Membership to get gas there.

A friend of mine just tipped me off on this trick where you can buy gas at Costco without a Costco membership. All you have to do is swipe an American Express card first, when you would normally swipe your membership card, and then swipe it again for payment. Afterwards, it will let you buy the sweet sweet nectar of condensed dinosaur bones at rock bottom prices without the $50/year membership. It’s that simple.

Normally, you have to swipe your Costco Card or the American Express Costco TrueEarnings card in order to authenticate in their gas station systems. It appears that you can simply use any American Express card in the authentication phase because the American Express Costco TrueEarnings card is just an AMEX with a Costco bar code.

I’ve confirmed that this works in Maryland and others have reported success in other states (except those that require an attendant to pump your gas, like New Jersey and Oregon). Locate a Costco nearby (check to make sure it has a Gas Station) and give it a try, Costco gas is usually many cents cheaper than local competitors.

(Photo by shindohd)

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