Tips for Saving Money at the Gas Pump
Inflate Your Tires, Empty Your Trunk, Get Oil Changes Regularly and Other Tips
June 9, 2008— -- It's on everyone's mind and it's hitting almost everyone's wallet: Gas prices and their seemingly endless ascent skyward.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans say the price of gasoline is causing financial hardship for them or their families.
How Are You Dealing With Gas Prices? Tell ABC News.
The price of gasoline is being driven up by high oil prices, which are rising because of growing worldwide demand for oil. Even as demand begins to decrease in the United States and other Western countries, demand continues to grow in developing nations like China and India.
But the picture is more complex than that.
Investors, worried about the stock market and the health of businesses hurt by the problems with credit markets, are taking money out of the stock market and buying things like oil or corn.
Further compounding the problem is that oil is priced in U.S. dollars. As the dollar weakens against foreign currencies, the price of oil goes up for American consumers like Thomas J Palmer.
When gas prices got tough, Palmer got creative. The Marietta, Ga., man took the keys to one of the two cars he shares with his wife, put them in water and stuck them in the freezer. The car has sat dormant ever since.
But you don't have to resort to key-freezing to help cope with rising gas prices. Here are some tips from the Federal Trade Commission that should put a few extra dollars in your wallet.
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