This evening, I heard a commercial on the radio for an app that will pay you cash for buying gas. Since almost everyone buys gas, it seems like a great idea. The cheerful lady on the commercial said that I could earn up to $0.25 a gallon! The second lady asks if it it really worth it and the first lady happily states that she earns up to $300 a month! Who would not want to earn an extra $300 a month?

A little math will show that if you want to earn that $300 you better like to drive – a lot. Because you will have little time to do anything other than drive! The BEST case is $0.25 a gallon. So to earn $300, you need to buy 1,200 gallons. A quick search of the internet tells me that the average miles per gallon in the US is 24.2 MPG. So, to burn 1,200 gallons, you would need to drive 29,040 miles A MONTH! If you average 60 miles per hour, you would spend 484 hours driving or just over 16 hours a day for a 30 day month. I guess if you have 2 cars you and your spouse could drive 8 hours every day. Unless you job is driving a truck or an Uber, it is hard to fit in a job while driving 8 hours a day.

However, that is the BEST case, the internet also states that the average savings using this app is more like $0.07. At this savings rate, you would need to by 4,286 gallons, driving 103,714 miles and spending 1,729 hours driving at 60 mpg or 57 hours a day during a 30 day month. If you have 7 drivers in your family or own a small trucking company with 7 trucks, you could get the driving back down to about 8 hours a day.

Plus, the app is not available at all stations so you might have to pay more for you gas to begin with. As “they” say – if something sounds too good to be true ….