How To: Keep Track of Your Vehicle's Fuel Consumption (MPGs) with These Free Mobile Apps

A man once told me to never complain about gas prices. With the average price of regular unleaded gas at $3.34 a gallon, it's hard not to, even if it is the holiday season. Since my car averages about 22 mpg, the man offered me this proposition: "If I offered you $3.34, would you walk 22 miles?"

My answer was, of course, "No."

So, instead of complaining about how much gas costs, we can do a better job of managing our fuel consumption, making sure we get the best miles per gallon possible. The best way to do this is to keep track of just how much fuel you're using on a daily basis.

Luckily, there's a few apps for that.

FuelLog App for Android Devices

FuelLog - Car Management is a free app (there is a paid pro version, too) that helps users keep track on their car's fuel consumption, number of fill-ups, and average cost per mile.

The statistics can help you gauge how you spend your money and can tip you off when your car varies from its usual output.

Mileage App for Android Devices

Mileage is another free one that helps you track your vehicles fuel consumption.

Mileage supports multiple vehicles for people who may drive more than one car on a regular basis.

Gas Cubby App for iOS Devices

Gas Cubby is a nice free application (there is a paid pro version, too) for the iPhone.

The free version has ads and doesn't allow users to export their data, but you could use a Google Drive spreadsheet to input the data yourself, so that you can have access to that information regardless of your device.

goDriveGreen App for iOS Devices

goDriveGreen is nice free app that urges users to watch their carbon footprint. The app provides helpful tips for better fuel economy and allows users to retrace their driving paths and see where exactly they are use the most fuel, so that they can adjust accordingly.

But do you really need an app to tell you how much mileage you're getting out of your tank of gas? All it is is a little math...

Calculate Your Fuel Usage Yourself

Before there were smartphones, there were these small electronic devices called calculators. And before there were calculators, there were these things that lived inside our heads that were pretty good at performing mathematical functions. In fact, those things are still there, we just forget that they can do things like math sometimes.

To calculate your own fuel consumption, just take the amount of miles driven and divide that by amount of gas consumed. So, if you drive 100 miles and use 8 gallons of gas, you will have averaged 12.5 miles per gallon. The hardest part is knowing how many gallons you really used.

You can then compare this number to your car's suggested mpg and adjust your driving or take her in for a check up.

If you really don't feel like doing the calculations the old school way, you can use this online calculator to do it for you.