How Long Will It Take You to Get Out of Debt?

MU's Office for Financial Success provides education and counseling to students for all areas of personal finance. The page allows you to subscribe to the Office's free weekly financial tip as well as sign up for one-on-one and group counseling sessions.

The site also has a Debt Management page of which I am particularly fond. The Loan Term Calculator allows you to put in the amount of loans you have (student loans, anyone?) and your estimated monthly payment. The Calculator will then compute how many months it will take you to pay of your loan, as well as how much you will actually pay in principal and finance charges.

I also like the Debt Calculator, which allows you to see how much time and money you would save from adding to your monthly payments. As an example, suppose you have $2000 in credit card debt and are currently paying $100 per month toward your balance and are being charged a 12% annual interest rate. If you double your payment to $200 a month, the Debt Calculator indicates that you would pay off the balance one year earlier and save $100 in interest! It’s not hard to imagine that the savings can be quite significant, given the amount of debt some of us have and exorbitant interest rates that can result from late payments.

So go ahead, check out some of these resources. Even a small step in managing your finances is a good step, and could possibly have some sizable benefits!

Kill Distractions!

Some of you might be lucky enough to have the summer off of both work and classes. For the majority of us, however, those days ended with the conclusion of our undergraduate degree and we actually need to accomplish things, whatever the season. To that end, I’m bringing you 10 quick tips designed to kill distractions (which lead to decreased productivity, of course). My favorites are having regular e-mail “office hours” and eating lunch away from your desk. Choose a few of these tricks and you’ll be cranking out papers in half the time!

Read the full article at LifeClever.

Public Transportation in Columbia, Mo.

As a recently car-less citizen of Columbia, Mo., I have been thoroughly testing the public transportation in our fair city during the past few weeks. If you live near a City of Columbia bus route (or can easily bike to one — all the buses have bike racks), I would definitely recommend looking into using Columbia Public Transportation for your commute to and from campus.

Price

Especially now that gasoline prices are climbing, taking the big blue bus to campus is an economically sound choice. Students with a student I.D. card ride for half-price. Here’s the current breakdown of options for students who can show I.D. (Prices are current at the time of publishing; check the City of Columbia site for up-to-date prices.):

• One-way trip: $0.25
• 7-day student pass: $2.50
• 25-ride pass: $5.00
• 30-day unlimited ride pass: $10.00

Purchases for one-way trips can be made with correct change on any City bus, and all passes can be bought at Wabash Station during business hours.

Routes Near Campus

All routes but two in the Columbia system stop at Wabash Station, Tenth and Ash Street (the main location for transfers), which is a 15-minute (or so) walk from Jesse Hall. In addition, the red, gold, brown and orange lines all have stops somewhere on campus. All route information can be found online, and physical maps can be picked up at Wabash.

Myth Busting

Several thoughts were keeping me from taking the bus before, and now that I’ve done it, I realize that they were unfounded. Reliability was one issue, but in my two weeks taking public transportation to and from campus for work, the buses have never run more than five minutes late. They are clean, and I feel safe during the ride. In addition, the drivers are generally nice and helpful.

A Few Downsides

Perhaps because so many college students take their cars to school and never take the bus, the City Transportation system does not generate enough cash to keep most routes running after 6:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, or at all on Sunday. This can pose a problem for those who work late in the labs or need to meet on campus in the evenings for group projects. For this reason, many who live car-less in Columbia require a bicycle (don’t forget to register it) or a scooter.

For those (like me) who are new to public transportation, planning the routes to take and accepting the extra time involved, as opposed to taking a personal car, takes some getting used to. But with my mp3 player in hand, I’ve managed to acclimate myself to the slightly slower pace of the bus system.

More Information

• City of Columbia Public Transportation (including ParaTransit)
• MU Parking and Transportation
• PedNet: Columbia Pedestrian and Pedaling Network

Little-known things you can purchase on campus

Speaking of ice cream, which you can purchase on campus (See “I Scream, You Scream” post), there are also a couple of other cool campus establishments of which you should be aware.

The Mizzou Meat Market (insert joke about the name here) is operated by students in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and combines traditional learning with hands-on, entrepreneurial experience. The Meat Market carries various cuts of beef, pork and lamb that are all USDA approved. Located just east of the corner of College Avenue and Rollins Road (Eckles Hall, for those of you familiar with that edge of campus) the Mizzou Meat Market accepts traditional methods of payment as well as—drum roll, please—student charge!

Another neat campus establishment is the Culinary Cafe, which is run by the students and faculty of MU’s Hotel and Restaurant Management Program. Although the Cafe isn’t open during the summer months, it does serve quality, themed (“Dinner Tour D'France” and “An Evening in Venice,” for example) meals during the Fall and Spring Semesters in Eckles Hall. Moreover, the Culinary Cafe accepts orders for football tailgates. Just order by 3 p.m. on Thursday prior to the MU game and you’ll be ready to serve a hungry bunch of any size! Student Charge is also accepted for tailgating orders.

So next time you’re looking to have a good time on campus, stop by Buck’s for some Tiger Stripe ice cream, run by the meat market for a little fillet mignon, and place an order for your next tailgating event!

I Scream, You Scream

If you’re anything like me – that is, composed of roughly 65% Oxygen, 18.5% Carbon, 9.5% Hydrogen, and 3.2% Nitrogen - you probably experience a patch of boredom or two over the summer. The shape of summer seems to set about this time every year for me. Faculty become rarer, colleagues keep weird office hours if they keep them at all and the heat seems to slow down everyone’s willingness to do much of anything. Except eat ice cream.

Lucky for you, Mizzou has their very own ice cream shop,Buck's Ice Cream Place. It's run by the good people in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. There is nothing better than enjoying some Tiger Stripe ice cream (or whatever flavor calls out to you) in the middle of the day. Or at the end. Or the beginning. Or all three. Buck’s Ice Cream Place is located on the south side of Eckles Hall.

Get out of your lab, office or whatever academic detention you've signed on for, and get yourself some delicious treats. You've probably earned them.

Free 411

Many of you may be familiar with 411, a nationwide directory assistance number. If you’re familiar with 411, though, chances are you’re also familiar with the fees associated with dialing the digits—over a dollar per call, which can add up pretty quickly if you’re too lazy to reach for a telephone book, like myself.

Luckily, there's now a free 411 number you can dial from your home or cell phone: 1-800-FREE411 (1-800-373-3411). Unluckily, what makes it free is the fact that you have to listen to an ad before you’ll be given your query results. True, the ad is only about 15 seconds long, but you’ll have to decide whether the annoyance is worth the savings. Free 411 also claims to never share your information with telemarketers. You can learn more about the service at Free411.com.

Google also recently launched a free directory assistance service called Goog-411, which can be accessed by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411. The service is completely automated and works with voice recognition software. This can lead to some misunderstandings, but with a little persistence (saying “back” a few times and retrying your query), you should be successful. It should also be noted that this service is still in the experimental stage and may not be available everywhere.

True, it might seem silly to compare 411 numbers when the phone book is free and doesn’t require any ad-listening, but it is quite a useful service when you’re on the run. There is word that AT&T is experimenting with free 411 calls, too.