In 2011, few things come cheap.\u00a0 Due to a number of factors, including inflation, people are facing rising costs in all areas.\u00a0 Parents can\u2019t feed their families as affordably; students can barely pay for tuition and books; and the general costs of things that we all need, like gasoline or other bills, are rising.<\/p>\n
We, at the Clarion<\/em>, are just like you.\u00a0 We like quality items that don\u2019t cost us an arm and a leg.\u00a0 But finding quality items for cheap is just plain difficult.<\/p>\n One area where we all feel a big right hook to the jaw is at the gas pump.\u00a0 Sinclair Community College is a commuter school, even if you live in the area.\u00a0 Few students live close enough that they can walk.\u00a0 It certainly is possible for students to ride their bicycle to school, but with the cold and the snow, that isn\u2019t as appealing as the 70 degree days of August.<\/p>\n If you drive, you know the pain of the gas pump.\u00a0 We checked www.daytongasprices.com as we were writing this, and the average gas price in Dayton was $3.13.\u00a0 That\u2019s right around the same as Ohio ($3.12) and in the entire country ($3.06).<\/p>\n Not to scare you, but if you paid the Dayton average and pumped, say, 15 gallons of gas, you\u2019d be handing over $46.95.\u00a0 We\u2019re not monetary experts, but we feel confident that $46.95 is a lot of money, and that we could find fun ways to spend that.<\/p>\n With a car comes not only gas (and, God forbid, maybe some maintenance) but insurance.\u00a0 We\u2019re not going to quote any exact figures, but insurance, especially for the young drivers here at Sinclair, can be very painful.<\/p>\n If we can provide any tips for money management, the first would be to just keep track.\u00a0 Keep track of what money went where (and why).\u00a0 That overwhelmed feeling of \u201cI don\u2019t know where my money went!\u201d doesn\u2019t help.\u00a0 We know that from experience.<\/p>\n You might want to cut out the restaurants, too, or maybe only go when you see a great deal.\u00a0 Try ordering water instead of a soda.\u00a0 Maybe pass on the appetizer?\u00a0 All of these things add up.<\/p>\n Oh, and you college students?\u00a0 Those cheap ramen noodles work great.\u00a0 No, it isn\u2019t high quality cuisine, but it fills you up and doesn\u2019t hurt your wallet.<\/p>\n For college students, getting an education can be a time of sacrifice.\u00a0 But, just realize that everyone has to do it. Your parents might be doing it; your grandparents might be doing it.\u00a0 Learning to deal with this type of stress and hardship will help you later in life.<\/p>\n We just wish that meant it wasn\u2019t so hard right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2011, few things come cheap.\u00a0 Due to a number of factors, including inflation, people are facing rising costs in all areas.\u00a0 Parents can\u2019t feed their families as affordably; students can barely pay for tuition and books; and the general costs of things that we all need, like gasoline or other bills, are rising. We, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1wW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5926,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions\/5926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}