Welcome to part 3 in “How to Save Money on Gas”! In this part of the gas series, we are going to focus on saving gas via credit cards. The real question is, does having a card save you money in the end? And how much does it save??

If you are one of those people who can consistently pay off a credit card, you could be saving 5-10% on your gas prices through a rebate. This means that your $40 fill-up will cost you around $36-$38. While this may not seem like much, if you spend over $150 in gas a month (which is only around 4 tanks), you will save around $8-$15 per month.

The Cards for Nationwide Stations:
Station Card Type Reward Amount Reward Length Annual Fee
Chevron-Texaco Visa 10¢ per gallon Up to $300 in rewards per year No
BP Card Visa 10% then 5% rebate 10% for 60 days, then 5% – no limit on rewards No
Shell Mastercard 5% rebate Up to $240 in rewards per year No

I’m not going into the APR’s here because you should really only get one of the above if you are going to pay it off each month. If you carry ANY balance at all then you will have NO benefit from using the card.

Most of these do give you 1-2% back on purchases at other places (non gas) but honestly to use this correctly it needs to be just for gas purchases. If you start making bigger purchases you are going to run into not being to pay it off.

Mathematically also note that a 5% rebate is larger than a flat 10¢ savings. The flat savings would only pay off if your gas prices were $2 or less (not likely).

One option that’s not a credit card:
The Shell Saver Card isn’t a credit card but functions instead like a debit card linking straight to your checking account. Now through April 30, 2011, you can save 10¢ per gallon for every Shell Station gas purchase. Afterward you will still receive 2¢ back.

Putting these together with your grocery gas savings could make for a huge gas savings! Earn Kroger Gas credits or Fuelperk credits that are all good at Shell and then get an extra 10¢ back or 5% rebate!!

This was going to be my final post in this series but then the deeper I dug the more I wanted to share!! Tune in Friday for great gas saving phone apps and other tips.