Wise shoppers know that the sticker price of a product or service never gives you the costs involved in using or maintaining it. Buying a dress? It may need alterations and dry cleaning. Buying a car? Insurance, oil changes and repairs add up quickly. Now, when it comes to the price of education, coming up with total costs can be trickier.

The traditional high school schedule has remained the same for the last century. It demands strict adherence to plan, requiring you to get up early five days a week for nine months of a year for a total of thirteen years. Then, once you're up, you have to travel to and from the actual, physical building and move through the classrooms with throngs of other students. While this type of regulated schedule may work great for some students, it's not for everyone. And it doesn't necessarily assure a better education.

As a kid, the last thing you wanted to do all day after being in school was to come home and do homework. You wanted to play outside, watch television or beat your friends in the latest version of Mario. As you get older, completing homework still isn’t the most fun task, and it’s possible you can think of a hundred other things you would rather be doing, or more importantly, things you need to be doing.

Are you an astute shopper? If so, before you step inside a store or go online, you have prepared a checklist of the features you want in a certain product. You weigh the pros and cons of the item, decide what aspects of the product are must-haves and compare similar items so you can select one at the best possible price. You aren’t willing to compromise on certain features because, in the long run, it just isn’t worth it.

School is much more than listening to lectures, memorizing dates and absorbing facts. After graduation, the lessons that often benefit you most are the ones you didn’t learn from a academic advisor or teacher. Sure, the information you gain in classes will certainly be useful to you as you further your education and start a career, but particularly as a student earning your high school diploma online, it’s the subtle life lessons you learn along the way that will be important to you as you move ahead. For instance…