Do you drive out of your way for cheaper gas?

In driving home yesterday and, as I unfortunately often tend to do, I was on the search for a gas station because I had let my tank run down far enough that the gas light was on.  Because I was close enough to running out of fuel that I was getting nervous, I just drove into the first station I saw without even looking at the price.  I ended up paying $2.89 per gallon and saw another station half a mile down the road offering gas at $2.73 per gallon.  I have a ten gallon tank and only had a gallon left, so I ended up leaving around $1.50 on the table by waiting until the very last moment to fill up.

I previously had this really negatively affect my wallet a month ago when I was returning a rental car to the airport.  I deliberately waited to fill up until right before I got to the rental car return at the airport.  By way of context, the average price here is between $2.80 and $2.90 depending on which part of the city you are in.  As you may or may not know, if you bring a rental car back and the tank is not full, they charge you a ludicrous price that is typically more than double the going rate for gas wherever you are.  In this case, it was $6.00.  

In any event, every single gas station within half a mile of the airport was selling gas for $3.99 a gallon and up.  So, by not filling up two exits before the airport, I cost myself more than $1.00 per gallon.  I of course had no way of knowing this, but it was a lesson to me to not wait until the last minute to fill up because there is nothing I hate more than having to pay more money than absolutely necessary for something.  

So what did I learn from this experience? I am going to start keeping my eyes peeled for a good price around the time my tank hits halfway empty so I am not stuck stopping anywhere with a pump just because I am about to run out of gas.  

You may think it's a waste of time and energy to worry about saving such a small amount but I would point out that it can add up.  Let's say that each of my wife and I need to fill up once a week.   I have a little car with a small tank but she has an SUV with a 25 gallon tank so we are looking at $6.00 per month or $96 annually for me and then $4.00 weekly, $16 monthly and $192 annually for her for a combined total of $288 for the two of us.  

I know that doesn't wow you as a huge amount that will change your life, but that is still more than $20 per month to spend or save as you wish.  

After that math, I am going to stop the next time I see a station with a cheap price.  

Do you research ahead of time where the cheapest gas around you is?   Do you recommend any particular apps or websites that you find to be particularly helpful?

Automatic Bill Payment: An Easy Way to Simplify Your Financial Life

In today's banking world, virtually every financial institution offers both auto pay and online bill pay, including the ability to have your bills automatically deducted from your bank account.  This is a very convenient option for staying on top of your bills, as you don't need to worry about remembering due dates or possibly missing a payment deadline and incurring late charges.  

I have virtually all my bills set up for autopay from my bank account and I have them synced to come out the day after we get paid.  (As a general practice my wife and I always keep two months or so of expenses in our checking account in order to make sure we never have issues with unintentionally over drafting).  

Our bank lets us set up automatic bill pay through the bank itself, but we elected to set up the autopay through each of the third parties themselves (cable company, power company, cell phone, student loans, even retirement accounts).  My thought was that the utility or other third party themselves would be in a better position than the bank to resolve any issues that might come up if there was some sort of payment glitch.  

As far as drawbacks, one of the main concerns I have heard with automatic bill pay is that a third party has access to your bank account, theoretically enabling it to withdraw at will and potentially cause you to be overdrawn and get you hit with overdraft fees.  I have not actually heard of anyone I know having issues with this but have read horror on several personal finance blogs about people who paid off their student loans only to have the servicer continue withdrawing money from their account even after the loans were completely paid off.  So, in my mind at least, the likelihood of this happening is fairly low.  The specific concern about connecting the auto payments to your bank account versus a credit card is that once the money leaves your bank account it is gone whereas with a credit card your own money has not actually gone put the door.  Having had to work to get some charges on my debit card reversed recently when it got stolen, I understand what a pain this can be.  

I have some of my recurring bills auto paid to my credit card, including a charity I give to monthly, but there is no real rhyme or reason to this.  I just set it up several years ago and never bothered to change it to auto pay from my bank account.  

Auto paying your bills is a great method for reducing the hassle of paper bills and wasting postage on sending in checks. I would strongly urge you to consider it if you are not currently using it.   

Do you pay all your bills automatically? What has your experience with this been?

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Saving on moving costs by getting a binding quote

My wife and I just moved to a new city 350 miles away from where we had previously lived, which meant either getting movers or renting a truck and doing it ourselves.  We moved to a fairly major metropolitan area so parking the truck would have been a challenge and the thought of driving the truck through the city when I am not a very confident driver in such a big vehicle scared both of us.  It would probably have been the cheaper option (the cost of renting the truck was about $400 and then we would have hired movers on both ends for what we estimated would probably run about $800-$900 including gas and totals and hiring movers).  

As is my practice I did a little research and filled out a form on some website where you could get quotes from multiple companies by filling out some basic information. I got calls from a bunch of different companies, very few of whom had any online ratings, with two of them giving me quotes for $1400 based on a flat hourly rate, assuming 10 hours drive time there and back (completely unrealistic in a large truck) and four hours of loading and unloading (again completely unrealistic considering we moved into a 5th floor condo).  A couple others estimated much higher, with two in the $2700 ballpark. 

In talking over the situation with my wife, she was skeptical about relying upon quotes over the phone that relied completely upon me reporting what we had to move versus a professional coming to see what we had and giving us an estimate based on that.   We called around and had several of the local moving companies come out to give us in person estimates and ended up going with one that quoted us $2100 (the other two were around $2700).  However, each of them confirmed what my wife had thought-it is completely useless to have someone give you a quote over the phone because they have no idea what you really need moved.  Even more importantly, each of the moving companies told us independently to be wary of a company that doesn't give you a binding quote but instead tells you they think it will cost x dollars per hour and estimating how long it will take.  Their point was that you have no idea if they're going to drag their feet and end up blowing the time estimate by hours and hundreds of hours.  Each of them offered the ability to go on the hourly route for price but also offered a binding price option, regardless of whether their truck got pulled over, if they blew a tire, etc.  

We chose to go with the binding quote based on an in person estimate and I would recommend that approach if you are moving any time soon.  

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Financial worries part 2

I previously covered this issue as it relates to my student loans but I wanted to address it in a slightly different context.   The issue is financial worries and, specifically, my worries about saving.

I have always been someone who compulsively worries about a whole host of things, with one of the things I worry the most about being finances.  One of my biggest source of financial worry has always revolved around the issue of saving, whether for retirement or any other purpose.  I constantly worry about whether we are putting enough aside, if it will last us as long as we will live, what we will do if unexpected medical expenses pile up, etc.  I think this is a topic that is especially prone to worrying for younger people because there is so much speculation in the media that social security will have run dry by the time many of those of us in our 20s and 30s retire in 30 or so years. Same with the continued rise in healthcare costs-all the talking heads say that healthcare costs continue to rise year over year and that the average retiree will spend $250,000 in out of pocket medical expenses during the course of their retirement.  This is completely independent of the retirement savings that will theoretically comprise the majority (if not all if Social Security goes broke) of your retirement income.

My specific worries about saving are not that I will not be able to achieve a specific goal but instead is more of a generalized anxiety that I will not, at some indeterminate point in the future, have set aside enough for whatever the source of worry that day is.  For instance, we are in the process of moving and are going to rent for the first couple years in our new city.  We currently own a home in our old city that we are in the process of renting out, but we wanted to rent in our new city before buying so that we could figure out what neighborhoods we like, etc.  So our timeframe for buying a house again is probably two years in the future, as we figure that will be enough time to figure out exactly where we want to live, let us settle into our jobs and even take some time to save up more of a down payment, as housing is 40% more expensive here than in the much smaller city we just left behind.  Similarly, I think both my wife and I have worried that we are going to have to put off having kids or to have her stay home with our kids like we have discussed and are hoping to do as a result of my having student loans because our living expenses went up when we moved. Probably the thing I worry about the most is that we will find ourselves eating dog food in retirement because we did not save enough while we were young.

The thing is, there has never been a particular milestone that I have had to put off yet because I/we had not saved enough.  All of the things I worry about are these nebulous events in the distant or not so distant future that may or may not come to pass.  My anxiety is more a generalized anxiety about money in general.  I worry this way about work, about whether I am doing the right things with my life, if I am being a good person, etc. so it just may be a function of my particular personality, but I was curious as to whether others have had the same experience.

Do you experience generalized financial anxiety of the type I do?  How do you cope with it?  What are some of your biggest financial worries?  Please share in the comments section below.

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