Can You Really Afford To Not Drive As You Were Originally Taught

Owning a car has always been something that has meant you're monthly outgoings increase substantially.

After the initial cost of the car, which can often be considerable in itself, you then have to pay for car insurance, vehicle tax, put money aside for an MOT and service and then there's the cost of the fuel, something which can cost you more than all of the other outgoings combined.

With fuel costs, it's a common misconception that aside from driving round to find the cheapest price at the pump in your local area, you can't actually do anything about how much it costs you - if you need to top up by 30 pounds a week, you need to top up by 30 pounds a week.

This, however, is not entirely true and although you can't change the price of fuel at the pump, you can change the amount of fuel that you need - without driving any less, too.

Rewind back to when you first began to drive. You'll no doubt remember having 'Ten and Two' being drilled into you when you first started your lessons.

But what about everything else that you were taught?

How about being easy on the accelerator?

Soft on the break, perhaps?

Does changing gears when the engine sounds ready sound familiar?

Chances are you'll remember all of these sayings (or at least understand their meanings and remember a variation), but it's also likely that you've actually stopped putting them into practice.

You've passed your test and you abide by the Highway Code - you don't legally need to do anything else, right?

Yes, this is correct - but if you want to lower your fuel costs, you need to start thinking about changing your driving habits back to how they were when you were first learning to drive.

Take the changing of gears as an example. One of the most common mistakes that people make when driving is that they change gears too early or too late to the optimum time.

Whist every car is different, the perfect time to change gears for most standard cars is between 20 and 25 thousand revs - anything over and you're wasting fuel as you're letting the car rev too high in too low of a gear and anything under and the engine has to work harder, therefore using more fuel.

In terms accelerating and braking, people have similar problems with both and that's that they don't carry them out slow enough - rather than accelerating slowly but steadily they often dump the clutch and floor the accelerator and instead of braking slowly and utilizing the gears, they leave it until the last minute to slow down.

And if you don't want to change your driving habits but want to reduce your fuel costs, consider heading to Smart dealers and purchasing a ForTwo - most reports state it's possible to achieve an MPG rate of between 65 and 85 miles per gallon.

Lowering your fuel costs may not be something that you instantly think is possible, but with the right knowledge - which you already posses but are likely to have just forgotten - you can reduce how much money you spend on fuel quickly and easily.