Ten top tips to save money as a driver

The pandemic has left many of us in a less secure financial position than we were before, and with a cost of living crisis brewing, every penny counts. Here are our top tips for saving money as a driver.

Drive carefully when your car is cold

When your engine is cold, it’s considerably less efficient. This means that if you accelerate too hard or drive too fast when you first start your car, you’re wasting fuel unnecessarily. It’s a good idea to be more cautious during the winter anyway, but you should definitely wait until your engine has warmed up before put your foot down.

Find the cheapest fuel near you

Fuel prices are higher than they’ve ever been before. The average price of petrol hit 146.89p per litre in mid-November, while diesel rocketed to an eye-watering 150.73p. If there’s ever been a time to find the cheapest petrol station near you, it’s now! 

Fortunately, there’s an app that can help you do just that. PetrolPrices.com allows you to compare prices from petrol forecourts across the UK, and by using it, you could save up to £220 per year. It can be accessed online or you can download it on your smartphone and use it on the go. 

Check your tyre pressure

If the pressure in your tyres gets too low, it increases ‘drag’, which makes your car less fuel efficient. In fact, tyres underinflated by 15psi can use as much as 6% more fuel.

The best thing to do is check your tyres regularly because their pressure will fluctuate with different temperatures, and the sooner you notice that the pressure isn’t right, the less money you’ll lose from having to buy extra fuel.

De-clutter your car

Most drivers will be guilty of harbouring unnecessary clutter in their cars at one point or another, and some will even be guilty of treating it like a bin on wheels! But there’s a genuine reason, other than hygiene and tidiness, that you should declutter your car - especially if you’re storing items that might be weighing it down.

The heavier your vehicle is, the more fuel it uses to get you from A to B, so unless you’re storing something essential in the boot, it’s worth getting rid of any excess weight.

Claim for pothole damage

Potholes cost motorists an estimated £730 million every year according to Potholes.co.uk, with as many as one in ten mechanical failures caused by them. 

What many drivers don’t know is that you can actually make a claim if your car has been damaged by a pothole. Your success will depend on whether the local council has already been made aware of the pothole; if they haven’t then they’re not liable.

You can report a pothole on the Government website here. If you decide to make a claim, you must address it to the correct authority, providing information about the issue and any evidence you have collected, such as repair invoices, a current MOT certificate and photos of the damage.

Avoid driving with an empty or full tank

Driving with only a small amount of fuel in your tank actually makes it run out a lot quicker, as well as putting unnecessary pressure on your fuel pump which could, in turn, become damaged.

Likewise, fuel is pretty heavy, so if you fill your tank up you’re going to be carrying around a lot of extra weight. As a result, your car will consume more fuel, so you’ll have to fill up quicker. 

Find cheap parking spaces

This is another instance where technology can come to the rescue. The closest parking space you can find might not necessarily be the cheapest, so it’s worthwhile checking a parking app like Parkopedia or YourParkingSpace.

That being said, if you’re looking for an inner city parking spot, you should probably weigh up how far away the space is, because you could end up sitting in endless traffic that will waste fuel. 

Get a black box insurance policy

We know what you’re going to say - having your driving tracked is less than ideal, especially if you’ve been driving for years without any issue! But while it’s typically thought that black box policies are reserved for younger and less experienced drivers, you could benefit from having one too. 

For anyone who doesn’t know, black box policies work by monitoring your driving. They measure things like your speed, your acceleration, and how harshly you break. Most will then give you a score, and if at the end of the year the score is good enough, you’ll be given a much cheaper renewal offer.

Car share

Know someone who’s heading the same way as you? Why not arrange a car share? Nowadays, you don’t even need to know someone who is going in the same direction; instead, you can use websites like BlaBlaCar that allow you to arrange carpooling online.

Add family members to your insurance

If a friend or family member also drives and could get some use out of your car, why not add them to your insurance? This is a great way to make it cheaper overall, and if the other named driver has more of a no claims bonus than you, you’ll sometimes be allowed to transfer it across.

Hopefully our ten top tips for saving money as a driver will help you with your finances at least a little bit over the festive period. If you’ve got any money saving advice, we’d love to hear it!

Since one of the best ways to save money is to keep your car in good condition, thus avoiding hefty repair bills and breakdowns, why not book your car in for a service or a winter health check? WhoCanFixMyCar can help you find the right garage at the right price.

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