How to save money on petrol - Part I

Feeling the pinch at the pump?

In the UK, petrol prices have increased by an enormous 25% in the last twelve months and whilst Gordon Brown may have decided to postpone the 2p rise in fuel duty for the time being, an end to the increase in prices seems, for now at least, to be just wishful thinking.

However, despite all this doom and gloom, there are numerous quick and easy things that you can do to fight the costs of petrol and diesel and make running your car a little less expensive.

In this post, and in the next few posts, I will be providing a shortlist of my top money-saving tips on how to save money on petrol or diesel.

1. Always buy the cheapest petrol

This may sound obvious, but so many people always buy their petrol from the same petrol station and don’t think to shop around and see if they could be paying less round the corner.

Now, before you start saying that any money you save will have been lost whilst you drive around looking for the cheapest petrol, take a look at www.petrolprices.com.

At www.petrolprices.com you can enter a postcode or town name and it will tell you immediately where to find the cheapest (and the most expensive) petrol and diesel in your area. Then you can just go straight to the cheapest petrol station.

I must admit, I was a bit sceptical when I first heard about this. All petrol stations charge about the same, give or take 0.1p. Right?

Wrong!

I just typed in my postcode and discovered that in my area alone, there is currently a difference of 5.6p between the highest and lowest prices for unleaded petrol, and a difference of 4.0p between the highest and lowest prices for diesel. If I were to fill up a 50 litre tank with petrol, by going to the cheapest petrol station I could be saving myself a tidy £2.80 each time I filled up.

So shop around, you could save pounds!