To Save or Not to Save?

Thanks Mom and Dad!

I was driving around the other day and my attention was drawn to the little sticker in the upper left hand corner of my windshield. You know, the yellowish sun stained sticker that one that no one pays attention to until your car is 3,000 miles overdue for an oil change. So since we are going on a couple trips this week and both the mileage and the date on the sticker were embarrassingly far-gone, I figured I should get my oil changed. As a poor, starving, impoverished college student I thought I would save a couple bucks by doing it myself, so I did a little research on how to do it and how much money I would save. The following is a list of products I would need and conservative prices:

1 Oil Filter: $5.00

4 Quarts of Oil: $16.00 (at $4.00 per bottle)

Crappy Pan: $1.00 at DI

Finding a Way to Dispose of Old Oil: Sucky

Probably an Oil Filter Wrench: $10.00 on Amazon

So the total comes to a conservative $32.00. Of course I could reuse the oil filter wrench, so eventually it would pay for itself, the pan too, so let's say around $25.00. Jiffy Lube offers the service for around $30.00, and then I can get a $7.00 discount for being a student, so $23.00 total.

Let’s recap, this is what would happen if I did it myself: I would get dirty, I would have to get parts, and I would be saving negative $2.00, sounds pretty undesirable. Then I said to myself, “Wait a minute Jordan, don’t you want to have a more intimate relationship with your vehicle? Dont you want to know what's being put into your wonderful Honda CRV? And aren’t you tired of telling them you’ll wait until next time to change the gross air filter?” But then I reasoned with myself by saying, “I have a great relationship with my wife, but when she has a problem under the hood, I send her to the gynecologist, I don’t look it up on youtube and learn how to fix it. Why is the car any different?” That seemed to shut myself up because I received no rebuttal, which means I am going to Jiffy Lube.