Money I have Spent and Money I Hope to Save on Gas

My Rainbow of Parking Passes from Freshmen Year to Senior Year

First Year Without a Parking Pass
An E permit costs $110.88 for the entire year. I have bought an E permit for the past 3 years, and in light of this project this is the first year I am not going to purchase one. Throughout the years I bought them for various reasons such as parking at the library, on North Jordan, or the SRCS. I even bought a D pass my freshmen year in hopes of persuading my parents to let me bring my car to school. That failed miserably, they made me return it. I eventually got one the second half of second semester though.

Money Spent on Gas
I took a look back at my credit card statements to see just how much I spend on gas per month. So from August 2011 to August 2012, I spent a total of $857.07 on gasoline alone. According to my 2011 year end statement, 25% of my spending went towards gasoline. Here are some numbers:

Average Spent Per Month: $65.93
Median: $72.40
Range: $0, $118.44
Year Total: $857.07

You have to keep in mind that I live almost 240 miles away from IU, so it takes an entire tank of gas for a round trip.  The amount of money spent on gas is correlated with the times I went home or came back to school. Aug-11 I was moving back to school, Nov-11 I went home for Thanksgiving break, Dec-11 I came home for Christmas break, then in Jan-12 I came back to school. In May-12 I spent the most amount on gas and that is because I went home and came back to IU twice in one month. July and August were also times where I was travelling. When we near the end of the semester I will post about how much I have spent in September, October, and November of 2012. As of today, I know I have not filled up on gas since my trip home in the end of August.

Things I Still Needed my Car For
Unfortunately I have found that there are still things I need to use my car for.

• Laundry
• My apartment and my building do not have laundry facilities. That means I need to take my laundry elsewhere. And by elsewhere, I mean my friend's apartment. Since I dont have constant access to a washing machine, my laundry piles up until the point where I need to take it over to her house. At this point there is no way I can get tons of dirty laundry on a bike. So I do use my car to transport my clothes and the laundry basket they come back folded in. I try and do my laundry every other week.
• Recycling
• This is quite counterintuitive, but my apartment does not have recycling either. They actually originally told me we had it and then when I pointed out there were not recycling totes by the dumpster, they retracted their statement. So this leaves me to bringing my recyclables to the center on 10th Street. My old roommate and close neighbor, Lauren, also lives in an apartment that does not offer recycling. So every other week or so we switch off bringing it to the center. I do always chain this trip with wherever else I have to go for that week. I do have to keep in mind that the recycling center is not open on Sundays, and Sundays are usually the days I like to do my errands. But I have to say, this situation is way better than my sophomore year where I drove to the recycling center on S. Walnut.
• Grocery Shopping
• Honestly, I have not ridden my bike to the grocery store yet. I could not get over the financial commitment to a cheap bike rack and the atrocity that would be a milk crate on the back of my bike. To control the guilt I feel for not doing so I only drive to the grocery store if I need to go somewhere else close by. Or I only go somewhere else close by if I am going to the grocery store. So I am never going to just the grocery store. I still chain all of my trips into the one day I can use my car. I pick which grocery store I go to depending on where else I need to go. I needed to go to Hobby Lobby last week, so I checked out what groceries I needed and went to the Kroger next door.