What’s the Best and Worst Day to Buy Gas in Louisiana?

According to travel experts the American Automobile Association tens of thousands of Louisiana drivers will join literally millions of their "closest friends" on the nation's highways over the next ten days as the Thanksgiving holiday kicks off one of the busiest travel times in the country.

Triple-A is projecting that some 54 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from their homes over the next week or so. Millions of those travelers will be driving and that naturally means a stop at the gas station before, during, and after the trip has been completed.

For motorists, there has been some good news involving this year's Thanksgiving travels. The news is that you'll be paying a lot less for fuel this year than you paid for fuel last year. The American Automobile Association says on average, gas prices across the nation are about .40 cents cheaper this year than just one year ago.

The current national average price for a gallon of regular fuel is $3.34. In Louisiana, we are paying even less. According to Triple-A that same gallon of regular gas in Louisiana would only cost you $2.90. Meanwhile, the gas price app Gas Buddy says you can fuel prices even lower in cities like Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles. One Gas Buddy finding suggested motorists might be paying only $2.61 a gallon for regular.

Look, we all know gas prices fluctuate. Most often we don't know why they fluctuate. But we do know there are specific days of the week when a savvy shopper can fill up her tank for even less, just by filling up on a certain day or avoiding a fill-up on another day.

Here's what Gas Buddy says about the best and worst day to buy gas in Louisiana. The day you want to avoid when it comes to filling up your tank is Friday. Researchers discovered that gas prices are usually higher during the latter part of the week because key government reports are often issued on Wednesdays. Often this data affects energy prices and those prices get reflected at the pump by Friday.

Conversely, the best days to buy gas in Louisiana come at the beginning of the week. Since most commodity traders take the weekend off you'll find fuel prices in most places lower on Monday and in Louisiana Tuesday is the day that researchers found for motorists to fuel up for less.

One analyst suggested if motorists collectively chose to fill up on Friday versus Tuesday we'd be paying about $1.1 billion dollars more for fuel over the course of a year. Granted the daily difference between Tuesday gas prices and Friday gas prices is usually just a penny or so, but those pennies add up over the course of a year.

And since holiday driving usually leads to holiday meals, here's another nugget or two that you can use around your holiday table and if you're alone for Thanksgiving just pick up some of the foods below you'll be "a family of four" in no time.