Can you fill your gas tank for free?

[Jeff]

Gas prices have been higher than ever these days, and everyone is talking about it. I was talking with a colleague who actually is hoping gas goes up to $10 a gallon!

He explained that there are numerous benefits to high gas prices: less traffic, better air quality, better for the environment, increased support for public transportation and increased research into cleaner fuel alternatives.

And he's not worried about paying 10 bucks a gallon to fill his gas tank.

So I pressed him a bit, and learned that he uses some of his portfolio to invest in stocks that do well when gas prices go higher. He earns a greater return when gas prices go up, effectively offsetting his cost for gasoline.

I took that concept and created (drum roll please) the DriveFreeForLife Free Gas Calculator.

You simply enter in a fill in three fields on a simple form, and the calculator will tally your total annual fuel costs and tell you how little it would take to offset those costs.

I've been working on this for a few weeks, and officially rolled it out today. Please take a look, give it a digg, try out the calculator and leave a comment (good or bad -- I want it all!). I want to know if you think it could work.

[Philip]

Nice site, Jeff. I'll have to figure out liters and kilometers here, before I can calculate my annual fuel costs.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Philip

Nice site, Jeff. I'll have to figure out liters and kilometers here, before I can calculate my annual fuel costs.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

Philip, couldn't you just substitute liters for gallons and kilometers for miles? I think the formula would be the same.

# kilometers driven / # kilometers per liter (KPL?) * the price of a liter of fuel = your total annual fuel cost.

You could even use your local currency if you wanted, and it would calculate your total annual fuel cost in your local currency.

The only problem is that the rest of the calculations (how much you would need to invest, etc.) would be off. If you wanted to use kilometers and liters, that should work fine, but you will want to convert the currency (price per liter and the optional "hedge fund") into US dollars, and it should work.