My girlfriend and I are planning an extensive road-trip this summer. 2 and a half months and approximately 8000 total miles.
We just drove by our neighborhood BP and regular unleaded is clocking in at $2.69/gallon. Here’s hoping that prices either drop or at least don’t go up anymore.
It cost $40 to fill up our Subaru Outback this morning, which (we’re guessing) gets about 28 mpg. Rounding up, that’s about $770 that we can potentially look forward to in gas costs alone.
Needless to say, I’m shopping around for the best gas card deal for the money, ideally with an option for the incentive/dividend being free gas.
We have Krogers here in Atlanta, but I never saw one until I’d lived in Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta. I’m fairly sure they’re an eastern chain, but things could’ve changed in the 8 or so years since I moved from out west.
I think the better bet for us will be something like a Shell card, or some other gas station brand that we will be most likely to find all over the US.
I buy my gas at Shell and get Air Miles which I can redeem for $20 gas vouchers. It takes 175 Air Miles to get a $20 voucher. If you are buying most of your other purchases along the way at Air Miles places you could end up with plenty of vouchers. Hmm, I just realized you will be on the road and won’t be able to recieve your vouchers…nevermind.
Discover card has a 5% cash back gas card up to the first $2000 worth of gas and IIRC 3% for the rest, Chase has a 5% cash back on gas, groceries and drug store.
AAA posts the fuel prices at stations so you can check for the lowest.
I applied for the Discover card last week. Interestingly, I stumbled upon a promotion for it during an investigation of gift card incentive fraud (Discover was not the object of the investigation, needless to say).
Then I started thinking that maybe there was something out there better than 5%, hence my plea.
BP has a card that gives 6% back on gas purchases for the first 2 billing cycles, which would get us through most of the trip if we timed it right. But even so, the reward we’d be looking at equals basically one free tank of gas over the whole trip.
I’m trying to get excited about the going level of rebates…trying really hard.
We’ve spent a good chunk of money on gear and such getting ready for the trip, but it has been in fits and spurts over the past few months and almost exclusively on my debit card.
I just wasn’t thinking ahead enough to see the potential gas incentive value of all of those purchases until it was too late. :smack: