Saving money while traveling is like the holy grail. If you haven't already, check out our tricks for finding cheap flights and our list of the best hotel search engines.
But what about driving?
Being behind the wheel is already expensive enough. With the cost of gas marching upwards and road tax and car insurance eating into our monthly budgets, it's more expensive than ever to put your vehicle on the road.
Google Maps can help cut a tiny fraction of that cost by making sure you never accidentally end up on a toll road.
Google Maps GPS
While there are lots of excellent GPS apps on the market, for most people Google Maps is more than good enough. If you use Google Maps as your primary navigation tool, why not make this quick tweak to prevent you from wasting unnecessary dollars?
You need to make the changes to your route on a trip-by-trip basis, so fire up the app and enter the details of your journey. Once you've successfully logged your start-point and end-point, you need to tap the three vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
On the menu, choose Route Options. You'll see three new options. Mark the checkbox next to Avoid toll roads. Click Done when you're ready.
As you can see from my example below, sometimes the changes can add a significant amount of distance to your journey. To truly save money, you need to establish whether the increased costs in gas are offset by the savings you make on the toll roads.
How do you use Google Maps to save money when you're driving? Let us know in the comments below.
