Costco Can Help You Save This Much on Gas

With gas prices at an all-time high, there's no shame in shopping around to find the best prices—just as you would at the grocery store.

So what is a Sunday driver to do when gas prices are soaring?

Get a Costco membership.

A recent analysis by Yahoo Finance found that you can save over $300 in gas annually by purchasing a Costco membership.

In Patchogue, New York, for example, the highest gas price is $4.79 at BP. However, gas at Costco is just $4.29, a whopping 50 cents per gallon less. Filling up at Costco would cost $60.06 while going to a different gas station could cost up to $67. That's a difference of $364 annually.

That's enough in savings to justify the $60 Costco Gold Star membership fee.

"It's a dire situation and won't improve any time soon," GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, told NBC News in Chicago. "We've never been in this situation before, with this level of uncertainty… Americans will be feeling the pain of the rise in prices for quite some time."

Now is the perfect time to snag that membership, as company executives have hinted at a rate increase for the first time in nearly five years. The last time the price increased was in 2017 when a Gold Star Executive membership rose from $110 to $120 annually, and the Gold Star Everyday membership increased from $55 to $60.

If you can time your weekly Costco shopping trip with filling up your tank, the membership may be worth the price.

Not a Costco in your area? There may be one coming. Check out These 6 States Are Getting Costco Warehouses Soon.