Are you one of the many millions of motorists on Britain’s roads that find themselves having to travel by car on long journeys either on an ad-hoc or a regular basis? If so, then you will have noticed that your motoring expenses can soon start to add up to quite significantly high sums of money!
I’m not just talking about the cost of fuel such as petrol or diesel, but there are also long-term costs that you would need to take into account such as the cost of tyres and brake discs and pads.
But did you know that, with some carefully planned changes to your long journeys, you could actually end up saving yourself a whole bunch of cash? Here is how!
Use public transport
Now you might be thinking to yourself that using public transport is a bit of a strange concept to consider if you use your car for driving on long journeys, but hear me out on this one!
There are going to be occasions where it would end up being cheaper for you to use public transport either for part of your journey or its entirety. For example, I live in the West Midlands and sometimes have a need to commute down to London.
I would have normally driven to London and back in my car, but I have determined that when I need to go some destinations in London it’s cheaper for me to either drive into Birmingham, park there and take a train down to Euston, or drive all the way down to Hillingdon station, park there (either quite cheaply or free, depending on when I go) and then just take an Underground train into Central London.
Obviously there are going to be some destinations where you have no choice but to drive, but it is worth looking at all of the different transport options available to you and seeing which is more affordable for your purposes.
Find the location of cheap filling stations near you
Websites such as PetrolPrices.com are a great way of finding out where your nearest filling stations are. Quite often, filling stations owned by supermarkets could save you up to 5 pence per litre as opposed to going to your regular filling station.
As you might have noticed on your travels, the prices of fuel vary wildly between different filling stations, even with ones owned by the same company, so it is definitely worth shopping around for cheap fuel.
Drive slower
According to used car dealer Country Car, if you aren’t in a hurry to get to your destination then you should just drive a little slower than you normally would. For example, if most of your journey involves driving on the motorway, instead of driving at the speed limit (or higher, if you are a speed demon) consider dropping down to 60 mph or so.
You might even want to consider using your car’s cruise control function (if available) for long stretches of motorway journey so that you are driving at a constant speed to help reduce your fuel usage even more.
