Details at Jet Blue’s Promise page.

If you have a student in high school in Monroe County, applications and announcements have been sent to the local schools about the summer sister city student exchange opportunity to Hofu, Japan.

My family belongs to the Monroe International Friendship Association, which sponsors this program. (Click here for contact information or e-mail me if you want a copy of the application packet.)

My husband and I hosted students in 2001 and 2008 and the daughter was one of Monroe’s student ambassadors in 2006.

Now, as you look through the application details, you’ll see what fees the students are expected to pay. And I can hear local parents asking, “Doesn’t the club have volunteers, sponsors, fundraisers and grants to help out with the cost for participants?”

Yes, the club does recruit volunteers, sponsors, fundraisers and grants on a constant basis. And this year’s student fee of $1,500, plus money for gifts to your hosts and new friends and your passport expenses, is what is left over in the budget after all those efforts. Most of the student fee basically goes toward the plane ticket.

If you have checked into the cost of other student travel programs that are advertised in direct mail campaigns, you’ll realize this opportunity is far less expensive than many alternatives. And with this being a sister city program, a lot of the same families are involved year after year. We’ve made a lot of friends in Monroe through MIFA.

There are no fees to be a host family, although the host family will pay for any expenses of entertaining their student guest during the stay. (The details of those plans are entirely up to each family. For example, we took our 2008 student to a Toledo Mud Hens game and to the Monroe County Fair.)

But for the three to five students who will represent Monroe County in Japan this summer, that is a lot of money for a family on a tight budget to come up with.

How did we do it?

We started planning about a year before we expected our daughter to go.

She asked for money for birthday and Christmas and set that aside. The relatives who prefer to provide gifts instead of cash understood where the money was going, and were therefore more likely to give her money than “stuff”.

She worked a part-time job for about three months and saved up that money.

And because she was going to Japan, we were very picky about whatever other fundraising or out-of-pocket expenses for travels she did with her other clubs and organizations. She did go on trips with her Girl Scout troop, in part because the troop always did very well with its cookie booth sales. She was also a member of the Mackinac Island Girl Scout honor guard and we kept those expenses in mind as we planned out her activity budget.

But my daughter didn’t travel with the Monroe High School choir although we volunteered at the Madrigal dinner fundraisers for the choir. Another trip was just too much to add to the mix.

Click through my Japan archives for more discussions about the financial details of hosting and going abroad.

It was quite a shock when I moved to southeast Michigan and first saw auto dealer ads where the advertised specials were based on “employee pricing.”

That is such a rare situation in other parts of the country that, when my dad qualified under his stepdad’s retiree benefits for an employee discount on a vehicle purchase, the rest of us in the family CONGRATULATED HIM on his good luck – quickly followed up by “Can I get in on that deal?”

The autoworker employee and family discounts have contributed quite a bit to the number of very nice American model vehicles that are seen on the city streets and highways in southeast Michigan.

But if you are living on a downsized budget, you’ve got to rethink your transportation expenses. There’s not just the auto payment to consider, but also repairs and maintenance. And the auto insurance rates in southeast Michigan are very high.

Adjusting down the vehicle expenses can be difficult for local families to arrange when almost 47 percent of Monroe County workers commute to another county for work, and the local high schools are increasingly encouraging their students to take additional courses at the community college or another campus.

On the other hand, if one of the family wage earners has lost his or her job, that does free up one vehicle to be put on standby status, teenage driver status, or sold to clear the loan and / or insurance liability.

Some other vehicle budget tips:

• Learn how to do minor auto repairs. At least one of the community education classes in Monroe County have had auto technology introduction classes in the past. The new schedules will be announced in January.
• Seek out and save auto service coupons. Some of the local oil change and vehicle service places frequently participate in the coupon book programs, give coupons to customers or run specials in the newspaper. Save and clip those offers, use them as needed.
• Encourage the students to use public transit. The students may not like the lack of convenience, but if you live in the Monroe area, Lake Erie Transit is a realistic option. Monroe County Community College students are eligible for the student discount passes for LET. Some of the students who attend university in other cities have access to car sharing programs. And I let my daughter drive my car to Monroe High School on the one day a week she was most likely to have after-school meetings – the rest of the time, she had to ride the school bus or carpool. Junior high and grade school kids can be encouraged to ride bicycles to school rather than having mom and dad drop them off.
• Think about transportation availability and options when you decide where to live. I was adding up drive times to locations we frequently traveled to when I was house-hunting because I wanted as short a commute as possible. These days, gas prices are just as important of a consideration as time wasted in the car.
• Ask about alternative work schedules. Some offices have gone to four-day, 10-hour work weeks to cut down on commuting expenses for their employees. Alternative work schedules also might allow you to more easily line up a carpool with a co-worker.
• Take a serious look at student activities and the impact on your transportation expenses. It’s usually easy to find a school bus, public transit or carpool back and forth to school. The complication is when your child is signed up for dance, sports, scouts, theater, clubs and other activities that require transportation after business hours, on the weekends or out of town. How are you going to arrange for those rides? Are those expenses a realistic option on a downsized budget?
• Ask about insurance discounts. Contact your insurance agent and find out what options you have for keeping the vehicle rates down. If a wage earner is now unemployed or working closer to home than with a previous job, that vehicle won’t be driven as many miles on a daily basis and you might get lower rates (that did happen to us when my husband no longer needed to commute). And several years, ago, I took collision insurance off my car when I realized the trade-in value no longer made sense with what I had to pay for collision. Yes, I did have a minor accident with that car with no collision coverage. The vehicle inspection and emergency repairs ended up below what the deductible would have been anyway. Your student driver might get a discount for good grades. Your senior citizen status might give you a discount if you participate in a driver refresher class.

A snippet:

Amtrak ridership in Michigan continues to climb as travelers look to avoid shelling out $4 a gallon for gasoline.

Officials for the train company say travel on the Pontiac-Detroit-Ann Arbor-Jackson-Chicago lines increased 5.9 percent in the October-to-July period, and it’s up 6.5 percent on the Port Huron-East Lansing-Chicago route and 7.2 percent on the Grand Rapids-St. Joseph-Chicago line.

The price of gas is the strongest single reason for the increases, said Therese Cody, rail operating programs manager for the Michigan Department of Transportation.

“There was a breaking point for the traveler, and we’re at it,” Cody said. “We’ve charted a correlation between fuel prices and the increase in rail travel.”

Gas prices are definitely a big deal on a trip to Chicago. But I’ll throw in another variable: turnpike tolls.

Toll rates on the Indiana Toll Road went up noticeably on April 1.

When we did the math last year on the round trip expenses to get my daughter from Monroe, Mich., to her college in South Bend, Ind., the estimate came in at $50 for gas and tolls. That was BEFORE $4 a gallon gas, and BEFORE the Indiana toll rate increase.

I think we’re looking at at least $60 this year, but I’ll re-do the math during the next few days.

In comparison, putting daughter on a one-way ticket from Toledo to South Bend with Amtrak is currently about $30 to $40 with our AAA discount, depending on date of travel. Even considering the gas back and forth to downtown Toledo, it does work out a bit cheaper for daughter to ride the train than for us to drive.

Besides, it is such a long day back and forth to South Bend that whoever is driving needs a lunch or dinner stop even though we bring our own pop or water to enjoy on the road. Dinner has been anything from Steak and Shake to Dairy Queen during previous visits to South Bend. So it’s not just the gas and turnpike tolls we have to budget for.

Now while Amtrak doesn’t work for say, fall semester move-in weekend when daughter has to bring along all the college dorm gear, it did work for us last year when she had an appointment in Michigan mid-week and rode the train “home” to Toledo on a school night.

We’ll also look at Amtrak as an option during her fall break this year – unless she carpools with friends who are also traveling to southeast Michigan or northwest Ohio.

I’m just going to tell a family story.

My college-age daughter is spending her summer in Houston, Texas. She’s living with her dad and stepmom, working at her stepmom’s company as an office clerk. She got hired through a temp agency and is making $12 an hour. Yes, that’s a lot better pay than she could have earned in Michigan. And she doesn’t have room, board or commuting expenses to pay for because her other family is taking care of those details.

This summer, my daughter flew down to Texas in mid-May. She did have dinner with us during Memorial Day weekend when she and her dad drove up to Ohio to visit his relatives.

My husband and I also wanted her home for her birthday weekend (June 21 is her birthday) if she was going to be gone most of the summer. She flew in Friday night, and left Sunday evening, via Detroit Metro. The ticket cost about $369 on her student discount.

My daughter told me that had she waited much later to book the ticket, she would have paid at least $100 more.

And it wasn’t pleasant flying this time, either. Her flight in from Houston to Chicago was delayed so long that she kept her connection to Detroit only because she didn’t have to change planes. By the time she arrived at DTW after 10:15 p.m., the girl was pretty hungry for dinner! (We hit a fast-food drive-through on the way home).

On Sunday, we dropped her off about 4 p.m. for a flight that was supposed to leave at 5:30 p.m.

She and the other passengers got stuck waiting on the tarmack until they were cleared to leave. It was at least a 90-minute wait.

During that time, she, her stepmom and I were making phone calls and text messages back and forth figuring out flight plan B if needed.

My husband and I were glad to have her home to celebrate her birthday in our usual fashion – family dinners with both my family and my in-laws. But would we have wanted to pay more than we did for an airline ticket on top of all the airline schedule hassles to keep our family custom? I don’t think so.

It’s a good thing that when my daughter comes home in August to get ready for the next school year, she’s riding in a car with her dad and stepmom who will be driving to Ohio to attend a friend’s wedding.

Airline travel might just have flown out of reach for our families’ budgets.

Here are some links to get you started:

• Greyhound has both Military Discount and Student Discount programs.
• Amtrak has several discount programs including military and students.
• Military.com has a section on airline and rental cars and another section on travel on its military discount site.
• Student Advantage is a membership program where college students can access discounts on a variety of products and services, including travel.

Tolls on the Indiana Toll Road jumped significantly on April 1. Be prepared if you are planning a trip to South Bend this week to pick up a college kid like I did today (there are several area students who attend college out there); take a summer road trip to Chicago; or make a pilgrimage in the fall to a University of Notre Dame football game.

It used to cost $2.40 each way to travel between Eastpoint at the Ohio-Indiana state line and South Bend’s Exit 77.

It’s now $4.00 each way for the toll.

Now, there is a new service on the Indiana toll road called iZoom where you can electronically pay your tolls. If you make frequent trips on that expressway, this could be worth looking into. iZoom customers have dedicated lanes at the gates.

“Save a Ride and Save for the Weekend.”

That’s the new theme of Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments carpooling campaign. “If you carpool during the work week, you’ll have more money available for the weekend,” Toledo Share a Ride program manager says in the TMACOG newsletter. “You’ll be saving on gasoline and on car repair expenses because you’ll be putting fewer miles on your car.”

If you commute in or to the Toledo area, you’ll find carpool information at (800) 241-1919 or at www.sharearide.com.

Join the crowd.

My co-worker Doug Donnelly has this story for monroenews.com, and page 1A of today’s print and e-editions of The Monroe Evening News about some of the trips that Monroe Public Schools students are taking this spring: Monroe students on the move.

A snippet:

This is typically the time of year a lot of school districts plan field trips and student learning trips, from day-long events at the Toledo Zoo or an art museum. At Monroe, there are hundreds of students who have the chance to travel this year.

“These activities are wonderful opportunities for our students not only to learn, see and experience other areas of our country, but also to represent their community,” Superintendent David Taylor said.

Now, how can a school district afford these outings for students?

Here’s the behind-the-scenes fact: students and parents usually foot at least part of the expenses through fundraising efforts and their own pockets.

Sometimes there is money in a department budget or booster club fund to contribute toward competition and academic travel.

But even in cases of financial need, students and parents are very often expected to contribute to the cause through volunteer efforts or fundraising projects. In some cases, these “individual student accounts” may have been months or years in the planning.

And today’s article focused on just the school-sponsored programs.

What about those sports travel leagues, summer dance camp, church youth group travel to international events, and in our case, Girl Scouts?

What can you do, as a family on a budget, when faced with these opportunties and no idea how you will pay for it all?

We set our priorities based on what my daughter really, really wanted to do and what could be done with any and all available funds.

Girl Scout service on Mackinac Island, yes. A student exchange with Monroe’s sister city in Japan, yes. Representing her school at Family, Career and Community Leaders of America competition, yes. Monroe High School choir trip, no. Participating in a sport that would involve pay-to-play fees, no.

Look, if you’re a family on a budget, you’re doing well to send your student on one major trip during the high school years. Careful planning, saving up part-time job money, limiting expenses elsewhere, a lot of time spent working at fundraiser events, and some luck in lining up grants or donations might allow your student to travel on two or three major trips during those years.

You can’t assume that if even if such an opportunity exists because of academic, musical or athletic talent, that someone else will provide the funding.

It’s particularly dicey right now, given the regional economy, to rely on traditional donation appeals to cover the expenses. A lot of potential donors just don’t have it in their budgets these days to contribute to student programs. You may need to get very creative, and put in a lot of time, on fundraising efforts in order to meet your financial goal.

So if you get a brochure in the mail, or a filer from the club advisor touting the wonderful opportunities for an academic or competition trip, you should plan to spend a lot of time on discussions around the kitchen table as your family figures out the financial details.

At my daughter’s college, estimates are that half of the students will participate in at least one of the school’s officially recognized overseas programs before graduation. She plans to do a study abroad during her sophomore year.

My daughter also had the opportunity to represent Monroe in the high school student sister city exchange to Hofu, Japan, in summer 2006. So she’s already had a short-term experience with overseas travel and living with host families.

So what should you do with the glossy brochures mailed to your home, the posters hanging on the walls at the school office, the packets from your college’s international studies office, the notices you see on the Classroom and Community Pages in The Monroe Evening News, etc.?

Check them out. And don’t rely on just the information you get from the sponsoring company or non-profit. Ask around your friends, high school counselors and teachers, and international studies staff at your college as to which programs they recommend, don’t recommend and why. Talk to local alumni of study abroad experiences, the local or regional staff who help place students into homes or into overseas colleges, and do your research on the Internet. Find out what the language requirements are for that specific trip, what’s involved with the application process and what you will be expected to do on behalf of your sponsors when you return home.

Before you sign up for anything, you need to pin down exactly what you want from your international study experience:

• Some are educational opportunities intended to place a student with a host family for a few days, weeks or months so he or she can experience the region’s culture first-hand.
• Some programs are short-term community service or missionary outreach efforts, which might just be your cup of tea or fit better into an academic schedule.
• Some programs are not much more than sight-seeing trips hosted by a chaperone with stays in hotels. This can be enjoyable, but be aware that your college admissions officer and future employers will be far more impressed by travels that are more directed to educational or service opportunities.

So if the packet or brochure or ad that attracted your interest doesn’t offer what you want, start looking around. There are so many opportunities available that you are certain to find a program or excursion or schedule that is a better fit.

Now, how will you pay for this experience? Every year, it seems, at least one student or high school club in Monroe County holds a fundraiser dinner to help raise money for a trip overseas. (Yes, those notices can be sent to my attention at paula@monroenews.com for publication in The Monroe Evening News.) But with the competition for non-profit funds so tight in our community these days, you cannot rely on getting a significant amount of money through donations and fundraisers. The reality is … if the trip you want to take will cost $6,000 (or whatever the quote is); you have to come up with that money yourself.

For example, my family spent a year planning for my daughter’s student ambassador trip to Japan. She worked part-time at fast food and saved up her birthday and Christmas money. The grandparents pitched in more than they usually would for gifts, because we all knew she really wanted to go to Japan. And she did.

Now we are looking ahead to the expenses for her college sophomore year trip (most likely to Spain). Because we will work directly with the college on one of its officially recognized programs, we will have a pretty good idea when application season starts of what’s covered and what’s not with her tuition bill and related financial aid package. We also know, that because she is participating in an endorsed program, her classes will be arranged so she can stay on schedule for graduation. (We don’t want to get into a five-year academic plan when her partial scholarship is good for four years.)

If you participate in a semester or year study abroad while in college, it seems sophomore year is the time to do it. I recently read an article in Newsweek magazine that explained the schedule problems that college juniors who study abroad run into during interview season for summer internships between their junior and senior years. Although some recruiters will work with the overseas students’ schedules (because they really want those candidates), the better alternative seems to be make sure the students are on their home campus during spring of junior year.

Now … what if you can’t afford to go overseas as a student? Actually, that’s the situation I was in as a high schooler. I am the oldest of seven children. While my parents had good middle-class jobs, the reality is they also had a lot of expenses raising us kids! I never asked for a study abroad overseas, assuming my parents just couldn’t afford it.

So what did I do instead? In high school, I joined the local American Field Service chapter. It was a club for exchange students and their families. The American high school students like me attended social events and conferences with the international students.

As a freshman at Bowling Green State University, I signed up to live on the international floor in the dorm. My roommate was from Japan. My next-door neighbor was from Greece. Etc. I have lots of pictures of that year when my international friends and I taught each other about our culture, language and traditions.

When I transferred colleges, I went to University of South Carolina and experienced an American culture down South that was different in many ways from the Midwestern attitudes and atmosphere I grew up in.

After moving to Monroe, my husband, daughter and I hosted a Japanese student in 2001 through the sister city program.

This summer, my daughter worked at a Girl Scout camp where some of the staff members were college students from other countries. On three occasions, we had two to three of those girls staying at our house for a couple of days. (We live in a small house with no guest room. The girls slept on sleeping bags on the floor in my daughter’s room. We told them about that arrangement ahead of time and they still wanted to spend a weekend in a “real American home.”)

So it is possible for families on a budget, if you are creative and determined enough, to arrange for an international (or at least a multicultural) experience for their students. But do your research and ask a lot of questions ahead of time, so that you get the best possible experience for your time and money.