Quick calculating your road trip gas cost

With summer vacations just around the corner, I wanted to share with you this cool little trip calculator online.  It's at www.seattlegasprices.com.  Look up at the top of the page in the Top Features bar.  Click on Trip Cost Calculator.  You enter your start and end points of your trip, and the make, model and year of your car.  Click on the advanced Options, and optimize your trip either with Cheaper Stations or Fewer Stops.  The calculator will tell you where to fill up and how many gallons to buy at each stop.  I tried both options (cheaper vs. fewer stops), and there was a difference of about $25 in gas cost for a 2000 mile round trip for our car.

There were two features that I especially liked about this calculator.  One, it not only gave me the town for each gas stop, but station and address as well. The other thing I found very useful with this calculator was I could enter in various makes, models and years of other cars for the exact same trip, and get an idea of how those cars would fare on road trips.  We're in the beginning phase of looking for a new car, and this info was very enlightening.

However, you might not be in the market for a new car.  But this calculator could still be beneficial to you.  If you own two cars and are debating which to take on a road trip this summer, you could use this calculator to get a realistic idea of the difference in cost between your cars.  And lets just say, now that you've seen what the difference would be, you choose to drive the car with the cheaper fuel cost.  You pocket a $25-$30 savings, which could go for a nice outing while at your destination.  Or, you may just decide that $$ isn't enough to keep you from driving the larger, more comfortable, but more fuel sucking car.  You see, being frugal but fabulous is all about informative choices.  With all the information at hand, you really are in the driver's seat.