With America’s student loan debt growing larger every year, saving for college is on the minds of many of our clients. Whether you want to help pay for some of all of college, you likely want to do it as efficiently as possible. Which savings vehicle is best for me? How much do I need to save? How should I take out or pay down a student loan? The following articles discuss these and other questions related to college savings.
What are some creative ways to fund college?
Is it sensible to make saving for college a major financial goal when there’s no guarantee the child will attend? That’s a tough question for families and for this reason, we favor educating over dictating. When it comes to college funding, we want you to know what it might take and how you might do it; we don’t want to judge your values & decisions. The reality is most families don’t have college fully funded before the student matriculates. If you or an heir fall into this majority, here are some creative strategies that can be used at any time to boost college savings.
Getting Creative with College Funding
Do you understand the cost of college?
Parents of college-bound students are dealing with a chicken-or-egg dilemma. When it comes to student aid calculations, it just about requires a Ph.D. to understand how to fund a Ph.D. Different schools use different methods to evaluate different families, and when they get the results, they interpret them differently! Let’s wade into the wishy-washy world of student aid to search for some understanding and best practices for parents and students.
The Complicated Calculations of College Costs
What are different ways to save for college?
So often in life and in financial planning, perfect can be the enemy of good. This is certainly the case when it comes to saving for college. There are many ways to go about it, but the most important choice is the choice to begin saving. Nonetheless, we often meet parents of five- and ten-year-old children who have been too overwhelmed by the options for college savings to actually get over the hump and begin making contributions. In this article about college planning, we will highlight the different vehicles for college savings that a family can use to drive down the road to a degree.
How much do you need to save for college?
Will your child wow you with a 4.0 GPA in high school or do they believe C’s get degrees? Are their sights set on private colleges in expensive cities or the public university up the road? Do they know their path, or will they meander through three majors over six years? If you know the answers to these questions at birth, we can tell you with great certainty how much you’ll need to save for college tuition. For those without a crystal ball, college savings is one of the most confounding questions in planning. Let’s discuss how we think about college savings with parents of future scholars- from newborns to rising seniors.
How much do you need to save for college?
Will your child wow you with a 4.0 GPA in high school or do they believe C’s get degrees? Are their sights set on private colleges in expensive cities or the public university up the road? Do they know their path, or will they meander through three majors over six years? If you know the answers to these questions at birth, we can tell you with great certainty how much you’ll need to save for college tuition. For those without a crystal ball, college savings is one of the most confounding questions in planning. Let’s discuss how we think about college savings with parents of future scholars- from newborns to rising seniors.
