College Connect Fall 2018: It’s Confusing – the Multicultural Issue of Tipping
By Yutong Yuan
Tip, or not tip? As a student from a country where giving a gratuity is not part of the social etiquette, I’m always confused by when, where and how much I should tip. When eating out with friends at a restaurant, I can always ask for advice on how much I should leave as a tip. However, things become trickier when I’m alone, facing an iPad with tipping options ranging from 15% to 25% for a coffee or a lunch buffet. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Why Ditching Your Car is the Right Choice, and Easier than You Think
By Kristoffer Tigue
Six years ago, my car got towed for being parked four inches — rather than five — from someone’s driveway. In Minneapolis, where I grew up, that can run you a hefty fine of about $150 for the first day. The problem was that, as an undergrad at the time living in a college town, I didn’t check up on my car for a week. My bill? More than $500, and not to mention another towing charge because the engine wouldn’t start. I told them to keep it. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Understanding the Difference in Student Loans
By Keegan Pope
For most kids, when you’re 17 or 18 years old, debt is a concept that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you have a car, it’s likely that your parents own it and are least helping to make payments on it. Even if you don’t live at home, you’re almost certainly paying month-to-month rent somewhere. So when the idea of student loans to pay for college comes up, terms like principal and interest or subsidized and unsubsidized loans might as well be a foreign language you never took in high school. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Music May Seem Free, But It Bites our Budgets
By Xinyu Wei
The first day I came to MU, I was overwhelmed by flyers of welcome parties from tons of clubs and organizations. “Free drink. Free pizza. Free music.” I got hooked by the last part. For a long time, I took it for granted that I don’t have to pay for music. I remember all those tapes and CDs in my family home. All I had to do was put them in the players. hen it’s the time of MP3 and MP4, but they quickly got replaced by phones and personal computers. I still had no concept of paying for music, since the Internet gave me everything without asking for a single dime. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Roomies and Even Dining Can have Financial Pitfalls
By Sydney Olsen
College is a fun time in everyone’s life. You have true freedom for the first time in your ever. Don’t want to show up for class? That’s up to you. Want to stay up until 2 a.m. every night? Do it. However, with all of this new-found freedom comes a lot of responsibilities. Responsibilities can be fun too as you start to feel like an adult, but sometimes it is difficult to anticipate everything you need to think about when planning for these. I learned this when deciding who to have as my roommate. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Having a Pet in College: Worth the price?
By Nikki Ogle
We have all been there. You bombed an exam and feel like the worst college student in history. You spent your morning in a giant lecture hall full of unfamiliar faces, feeling all alone. You wonder if you are really cut out for this thing called college. Imagine, your whole day changes when you walk in the door of your apartment or duplex. A wagging tail and sloppy kisses or face rubs and the sound of purring can turn it all around. Read more…
By Daniel Noonan
Old academic halls, crammed libraries on finals week, and Frisbee on the quad are staples of American college life and are often revered as essentials to the college experience. Colleges and universities across America are now adding a fourth aspect to that list that seems to make or break a lot of students overall worthwhile of a traditional four-year degree. That is the undergrad internship. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: My Journey into Finding My First Credit Card
By Caitlin McCarthy
Books, late night pizza and beer, spring break, and the list goes on. All of these being college student “necessities” for a studious and fun few years. The one setback of these is how expensive it can all be. The possible answer to being able to afford these? A credit card. Unlike most college students, I have not yet gotten my first credit card. It might be out of fear that I will rack up too may expenditures and not be able to pay it all off. However, it’s a rite of passage into the beginning of being more financially mature and building a credit score, so I can make big purchases once I graduate. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: The Mizzou Rideshare Group
By Maggie Austin
When I started my college search during junior year of high school, I wanted to pick a university far from home. It was a classic mistake made by a moody, self-centered teenage girl. I actually thought my parents would drive from Chicago every weekend to come see me, so I looked at Syracuse, the University of Minnesota and, of course, the University of Missouri, which was the closest to my home in Chicago. But it still was a seven-hour drive. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: How to Survive a Summer in NYC on an Intern’s Salary
By Lexi Churchill
I have always loved New York from afar. For two years in a row I set my sights on working in the Big Apple, applying to as many journalism internships there as possible. When I finally received a call from the financial news network CNBC, I almost couldn’t believe my goals were coming true. If this sounds familiar at all, you’ve probably been dreaming of the big city without thinking through the big costs. This cost of living calculator from Bankrate estimates the cost of living in NYC compared to my college town, Columbia, Missouri, is about 136% higher overall. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Incremental Costs Eat Away at Your Pocketbooks
By Noah Higgins-Dunn
A vivid piece of financial advice from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary slips into my mind every time I’m about to enter Starbucks: “Do I pay $2.50 for a coffee? Never, never, never do I do that,” he said in a CNBC interview. “That is such a waste of money for something that costs 20 cents.” During those late nights at the library, cramming for an exam but struggling to stay awake, I’ll frequently sneak off for a tall Pike’s Place pleasure. I justify the $2.50 expenditure because, in my mind, the small cost is worth the reward. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: The Vaping Habit – Does It Cost More or Less than Cigarettes?
By Brendan Crowley
Parents, schools and the federal government have been wringing their hands over the nicotine-delivery sensation that’s sweeping the nation: the JUUL. JUUL puffers may look like they’re sucking on a flash drive, but they’re getting a nicotine hit rivaled only by smoking tobacco. Some turn to the JUUL to help kick their smoking habit. That’s especially common here in Missouri, where tobacco is part of the culture and isn’t subject to the steep taxes found in other states. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Students with Debt Struggle with Transition to Grad School
By Tucker Pennington
Imagine driving six hours to class and back each week to save $425 on rent. That is exactly what Jori Moore, a 24-year-old master’s student in school counseling at University of Georgia, does to help make grad school affordable. For the Lilburn, Georgia, student, living at home is one of the many financial decisions she has made in pursuit of her graduate degree, and every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday she drives an hour to reach campus. Read more…
By Tamara Khader
Kathryn Junod, a mother of a University of Georgia student with Down syndrome, has financial challenges quite different than most parents who send their child to the state’s flagship university. Her primary challenge is the lack of funding for the few college programs available for students with disabilities. Her 23-year-old son, Jordan Huffman, is enrolled in the Destination Dawgs program at the University of Georgia which provides academic, experiential, social and independent living opportunities for students with intellectual or developmental disabilities (I/DD). Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Pay to Play: A College Athlete without Scholarships
By Joseph Storelli
For most students at the University of Georgia the phrase “student-athlete” brings to mind players from high profile sports such as football or basketball. They imagine those on scholarships often described as being on a “full ride.” Rarely, if ever, would someone like Emily Barber come to mind. Barber, a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering, is a goalie on the UGA club ice hockey team. She does not receive the benefits that come with being a scholarship athlete. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Coping with Student Loan Debt as Graduation Approaches
By Tony Walsh
Noah Collins almost passed on the opportunity to earn a college degree. Collins said he underperformed in high school because he was not aware of the options to make higher education affordable. “I had this pessimistic view that I wouldn’t be able to afford it anyways,” he said. “I just did the bare minimum.” Collins eventually discovered ways to afford an education through financial aid, including student loans. “I found out there was a way to pay for it,” he said. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: The Art of Balancing School and Entrepreneurship
By Rachel Grace
For Yasmin Rahimi, working for someone else has never been an option. Rahimi started her first business at 15-years-old—a nonprofit organization called Couture for Charity—and launched her second one just a few weeks ago. However, Rahimi found that her entrepreneurial spirit often clashes with her responsibilities as a student. “My parents always tell me that school comes first, but sometimes it’s hard to put that into practice,” said Rahimi. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Unpaid Internships Pose Financial Questions for Students
By Peter Prybylski
Every year students seek internships, work studies or other professional arrangements with a simple goal: to gain valuable work experience in their fields. However, there is often a bigger question than time, place and duties hanging over the job-seekers’ heads: How much money is in it? As U.S. student debt grows past the $1.6 trillion mark, students who are looking for summer work often grapple with the choice between a standard summer job and unpaid work in their field. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: I’ve Got a Business Idea: What Now?
By Maycee Dukes
Haart Graham, a sophomore English and Film Studies student at the University of Georgia, said she loved writing, clothes and art, and wanted to turn these hobbies into something bigger. Just like that, HaartLine Fashion was born. “It’s like I have a million ideas and I want to do all of them, but I’m only one person and I only have so many hours in a day,” she said. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Paying to be a Student Fan
By Mary Ray
Rhett Parr was a notable exception to the student football ticket chaos this year at the University of Georgia. The fourth -year biology major was granted a full season ticket package to the Bulldogs’ seven home games as well as a ticket to all five away games. Because of the team’s popularity following last season’s near-miss in the national championship game, demand for student tickets was high this season. Many students who had applied for football tickets discovered they had only received half-season packages for home games. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Application Fees – The Underestimated Barrier to Graduate School
By Madison Gable
Students applying for doctoral programs will find many that offer full funding, which can include tuition, stipends for living expenses and even healthcare coverage. But first students must get accepted, and for some the cost of application fees can be a real barrier. Allie Ibarra is a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in English, religion and philosophy. She is also a hopeful doctoral student who is expecting to take $2,000 out of her savings to cover the costs of applying to programs in Chicano literature. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: University Student Finds Long-Term Solutions in Part-Time Work
By Lawson Powers
It’s common for undergraduate students to find part-time jobs to help support the financial burden of school. It is far more uncommon, however, for students to find work that also provides professional experience in their field of study. Josh Montag, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Georgia has found just that through his involvement in the Virtual Experiences Lab (VEL). Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Growing a Photo Business as a Student
By Keller Austin
Most students at the University of Georgia have a goal to graduate and get a job. But junior Luke D’Agostino is already working as a photographer. The public relations major takes photos for upcoming graduates and local concerts, and recently was asked to take wedding engagement photos. D’Agostino gets most of his business from graduation photos because of his location in a college town, but said he enjoys the challenge of other types of shoots. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: When Mistakes Happen with Financial Aid
By Julie Fields
Sidney Mulkey was preparing to enter her junior year at the University of Georgia when she was informed about a problem with her financial aid. She traced the problem to an error in her Federal Application for Free Student Aid, commonly known as FAFSA, and discovered the problem was likely due to an error on a tax return. She tried to contact the IRS, but soon realized the issue would take time to resolve. Meanwhile, she had to come up with $3,000 a week before school started. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Alumni Network Provides Financial Support for Club Rugby
By Jed May
Playing rugby at a university that doesn’t offer it as a varsity sport can be an expensive proposition. Teams organized by a school’s recreation department are often called club sports and their players don’t receive scholarships. Instead, they pay dues to join the team, and are also responsible for paying for everything from hotel stays on road trips to their jerseys and game balls. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: “Moral Hazard” Causes Doctors to Over-Provide Health Care
By Jeanne Davis
Emma noticed a swollen lymph node on the left side of her neck in the fall of last year. The public health student at a major southern university knew that a swollen lymph node usually appeared when a person had a sore throat or a cold so she thought that she could wait it out. When it hadn’t gone away by January, she visited a nurse practitioner at her school’s health clinic who referred her to an ear, nose and throat doctor. “They thought that it was mono,” said Emma, whose last name was withheld for privacy reasons. “I did a bunch of tests for mono… but I knew that I didn’t have mono.” Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: The Trouble with Graduating from College
By Henley Tullos
Students looking forward to graduation from college often face the uncertainty of taking over responsibility for their expenses and student loan debt from their parents. Chris Pope, senior lecturer in finance at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, said students can prepare to take over the expenses that were covered by parents during a student’s undergraduate years. “The best thing to do is make a budget when you first get your job,” Pope said. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Paying the Bills with a “Side Hustle”
By Caitlyn Richtman
M Anteau has a passion for making art but doesn’t make enough money for it to be a sustainable income. That’s why artists like Anteau develop a “side hustle.” “The side hustle is what pays the bills,” Anteau said. Anteau is a 21-year-old University of Georgia student from Atlanta majoring in interdisciplinary studies with a focus in sequential art and writing. Anteau (who uses they/their/them pronouns) said they have always been passionate about art, but didn’t pursue an art major until failing chemistry early in college. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Smartphone Apps Encourage College Students to Invest
By Brittney Butler
It is rare to find students with enough money saved in the case of an emergency, according to a personal advisor at a large regional bank. “You have a friend who always invites you to go get dinner and then complains that they only have $2 the next day,” said Christopher Ray, a SunTrust Bank personal finance advisor. Ray said most students should aim for having anywhere from three to six months of their monthly income put aside in a savings account in case something happens with their living situation, car or health. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: How Students Can Budget for Travel Experiences
By Ben Richmond
Traveling can benefit college students by providing life-enriching experiences. However, as one student discovered this summer, funding and budgeting for such an adventure isn’t easy. “I went into the summer knowing that I was going to be spending a lot of that money, but I didn’t expect to spend all of it,” said Emma Mathews, a 20-year-old junior from Atlanta majoring in accounting and theatre at the University of Georgia. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Saving to See the World
By Annie Campbell
University of Georgia junior Maggie Wigton said a Maymester in Bali was a trip she couldn’t pass up. Double majoring in anthropology and human geography, Wigton was eager to learn more about an entirely different language, population and culture from her own. However, money was a significant hurdle. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Paying for the Dream
By Andrew Keith
Ancel Briley maxed out four credit cards, accumulating $12,000 in credit card debt between his sophomore and junior year of college. He was chasing his dreams. What most people would’ve rationalized as poor fiscal responsibility, Briley saw as an opportunity to chase his passion of being an entrepreneur. “Everyone basically told me no, don’t do it. Don’t start your business using credit cards, but for me it was worth the risk. I had to make minimum payments on the cards for a long time. It took me probably two years to pay them off,” he said. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Education: Getting from Ambition to Accomplishments
By Amethyst Clifton
Grace Beasley was preparing for college expenses well before her first semester began. “I am always looking towards the future,” said Beasley, a student at the University of Georgia majoring in biological sciences. Beasley maintained a 4.0 grade point average while completing high school, but she said she worked during the summer to raise money for the extra things she knew she would need in college. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: I Hope You Can Learn from My Story
By Alexandria Montoya
I have always wanted to attend the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University. When I was as senior in high school and first deciding where to go to college I never thought it would be an option because of the cost of tuition at ASU. I’m from New Mexico and out of state tuition was way too much for my middle-class family to afford. It wasn’t until the day that I got a letter in the mail stating that they were going to give me a $50,000 scholarship that I thought it was a possibility for me. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: I Spent All My Bitcoin On Cookies
By Yael Grauer
About three years ago, I caught wind of an unconventional bake sale. The Cybertwee bake sale originated as a Kickstarter campaign. For 24 hours, a site on the dark web (also known as the deep web) allowed users to buy rosewater cardamom cookies using cryptocurrency. The project’s goal was two-fold. First, it would show that something cute and innocent can take place on the deep web, even though it’s notorious for nefarious uses. Second, it would teach people how to use the Tor browser and cryptocurrency. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Building a Sense of Security
By Tavia Matteson
Being a college student has presented me with many vigorous challenges. I have had to find a balance between juggling my education and working a part time job. However, the biggest lesson I have had to learn was how to manage my money. During my junior year of college, I made the decision to get my own apartment and this financially was a shock. To go from paying very minimal bills living in my parents’ home to paying over a thousand dollars a month just to live was a huge game changer in my daily life. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Always Keep Money Set Aside for Emergencies
By Rebecca Spiess
My very first experiences managing my own money as a teenager were surprisingly successful. I started working at 15, after my parents urged me to start a savings account. The job was in the kitchen of a nursing home where I’d been volunteering for years. I was serving seniors with severe dementia. It was a hard job, I didn’t get paid much and the hours were grueling because we were chronically understaffed. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Money is a Big Factor in Creating Who You Are
By Mythili Gubbi
It is said that money doesn’t define who you are, but I believe that it does. I feel that everything I am today is a culmination of my experiences and environment – and a lot of that is based on my family’s financial status. Whether it’s the neighborhood you grew up in, the school you went to, the places you’ve visited, the people you have met or the things you have seen, every aspect of your life has a role to play, and money is a big factor in creating who you are. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: The Value in Budgeting
By Maddie Johnson
In my just over two years I have spent to college, I have learned the only surefire way to financially successful is to create a budget. I spent two years with sporadic income from working shifts at my serving jobs, as well receiving monthly “grocery allowance” I receive from my parents. At this time I thought that I was being good with money by never buying things like clothes, makeup, or other things I didn’t necessarily need to survive. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: My Relationship with Money
By Lauren Bukoskey
My relationship with money did not fully take off until my college education did. I always was aware of what money was, but it wasn’t until I lived on my own and now had to really fully budget on my own as well. It was the first time I was financially independent and I had no idea where to start or really what that meant. With everything going on freshman year like new clubs, new friends, new insane text book prices-there are a lot of cost that accumulate quickly. Not to mention student loan debt. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Why College Students Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Credit Cards
By Bryan Pietsch
In the age of Venmo and splitting bills down to the penny, why shouldn’t college students be taking advantage of the perks of having a credit card? Students are penny-pinchers – they’ll split a $10 Uber ride between five people and Venmo each other the difference. They’re suckers for deals, sales and free shirts. So why not get free money? Credit cards (and credit card debt) seem like a popular choice in America, but a study found that only 6 percent of total student spending was on their own credit cards. Read more…
College Connect10n Fall 2018: Saving is Hard
By Barbara Smith
One thing I have learned about money is that saving is hard. Extremely hard. Growing up, my parents were AMAZING with money. They both paid off their student debts in their 20’s, they paid off their credit card bills in full each month, and had been saving for my college fund since the day I was born. I watched them closely and figured when it was time to start being serious about money I would be good to go. And that wasn’t the case. At all. Can you believe? Read more…
College Connect10n Fall 2018: Splitting the Check
By Amy Xiaoshi DePaola
After I landed my first job in undergrad, my mom’s spending money stopped, but it was a small price to pay for living at home for free. The only time when I missed the steady flow of cash was when I went out with friends. Like a lot of millennials, we love to eat out. We dedicate hours, and sometimes weeks, to online research, calculating coupons and local deals. Then, a long stretch of carpooling to the destination and taking painstakingly-aesthetic photos before digging in. As much as I love to cook, there’s nothing like sitting down and not having to worry about doing the dishes. However, there is another worry: the bill. Read more…
College Connect1on Fall 2018: I Thought I Knew How to Handle My Money
By Adrian Marsh
When I moved out of the dorms at Arizona State University at the beginning of summer 2018 and into a house with a couple of roommates, I was officially on my own, financially. That was the first time I had been responsible for not only covering housing but now utilities, Internet, grocery among other expenses. My parents have always supported me and will always support me, as long as they are around, but it was time for me to be pushed even further out of the nest. And I wanted to take that next step. Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Wallet-less
By Abdel Jimenez
In the summer of 2018, I traveled to Santa Monica with a couple of my friends for our annual vacation trip. We spent the Fourth of July weekend near the beach, tucking our toes in the sand with no worries. The second day in California we planned an all day trip at the beach. I remember leaving rushing out of our Airbnb home trying to pack all my necessities in a fanny pack (yes, they still make those). Read more…
College Connect Fall 2018: Balancing Your Needs for Student Housing
By Emma Veidt
Imagine this scenario: you can live near campus, you can have plenty of living space and you can have cheap rent. Now pick two. As I began hunting for my very first apartment last spring, I had little idea of what was considered expensive or affordable. My parents taught me how to save money because I grew up on a budget, but I was privileged in the sense that they never revealed to me the severity of our struggle. Read more…
