Breaks

There have been so many articles about the rising costs of college. I hope to address this issue on a more personal level, seeing as this is a personal blog.

Every time I think I catch a financial break, something breaks. Is that a coincidence? Both the timing of the events and the names? I recently received an unexpected grant just at a time when I wasn't sure how to pay for necessities in the week before my boyfriend's next paycheck. Yippee! It was a complete surprise and I was ecstatic. Not even a week later, my youngest dog got a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection). I took her to the vet, thinking it would be about $50 since she had one nine months ago that cost about that. Well, I had to take her to a new vet because her regular one was booked for two days solid and a UTI causes the victim to pee every 15 minutes or so--I wasn't willing to take her out every 15 minutes for two days straight. So we tried this new vet. The bill ended up being $227. I was floored. I tried to cut costs by requesting they not do the antibiotic injection, but they insisted. I always feel so taken advantage of by vets, except her regular vet which is a great guy. Lesson learned. If ever again, I must take Eve or any of my other dogs to the vet, I will leave if I disagree with something the vet is saying or a service they are insisting my dog needs. This wasn't even CLOSE to a life or death situation and yet they made it sound like that. Like I said, lesson learned.

Sometimes my car needs attention when I come into money. Or the computer gets a virus. But I try to look on the bright side and be thankful that I even HAVE a car that breaks or a computer that needs its hard drive wiped.

Back to the college cost thing: I found the article about parking passes in The Daily Wildcat quite amusing the other day. Because the cost of parking passes has risen so exorbitantly, people are finding alternative wheels. The UA has been progressively selling fewer parking passes over the past three or so years and yet they keep raising the price. It doesn't take a business or economics major to site the stupidity in that one.

Textbooks are another issue. I appreciate it when a professor doesn't require the latest version of a text, especially when the latest version is hardly different from the previous. Book companies, just like any other business, are in it to make money. So, if they simply change one minor thing in a book, they can tout it as the next version and make twice as much money on the new version versus the nearly identical old one. A website I have discovered in my search for cheap textbooks is Chegg.com. This site is ingenious. Instead of buying the book, this site rents them out. This is advantageous for several reasons: 1) the student doesn't have to even worry about selling their book back at the end of the semester, get low-balled at the book store, 2) Chegg.com plants a tree for every book rented and 3) it is cheaper than buying. Plus, included in the box with the book is a pen, sticker, and cute little business cards with comical sayings on them. Even the rental time can be chosen from three or four options, the shorter rent time obviously decreasing in price.