Category: Goal Setting
Blog
5 Questions to Find the Right Advisor for Financing College
Last week, I was contacted by a financial advisor who was trying to help her clients make the best possible decisions about funding college. She realized that she did not know enough to help her clients make the best decision, so she contacted me for some professional advice.
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The Most Important Thing I Took to College
When it was time for me to head off to college, my mom presented me with an ornate tin tied with a ribbon. Upon presenting it to me, she told me it had been sitting open in our kitchen for the last few months. She put the lid on and tied it up with a ribbon so that I would take it with me to school. It was a way for me to take a little bit of home and our family with me wherever I went.
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Because There are No Loans for Retirement
One of the big mistakes I see with paying for college is parents diverting funds from retirement to pay for college. Why is this a problem? The short answer is that there are no loans for retirement.
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Mental, Not Academic, Preparation For College
Most college preparation is focused on grades, standardized tests and applications. And while those are important, it does nothing to solve a big problem: only 59% of students pursuing a bachelor’s degree graduate within six years.
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Why it’s Important to Remember that Colleges are Businesses
If you had any question about how frequently colleges discount their tuition, there is a recent New York Times article that shows the practice is growing with certain colleges: When Colleges Dangle Money to Lure Students Who Ignored Them.
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The Anticipated “Surprise” of College Costs
More than a few families I meet with ask the question: “How did we get into this situation?” They are dual-income families making solid salaries, but have significant debt and are barely able to keep their financial house in order. And as their oldest child starts planning for college, they have no idea how they can afford it.
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Help Your Student Avoid Regrets about their College Major
Regretting your choice of college major is not an uncommon story. Most of us regret several decisions we made in our late teens and early twenties (although they make for funny stories sometimes!) and making a big life decision like career preparation is a big ask.
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Why “Right Fit” Schools Minimize College Debt
No parents want their children to be burdened with a lot of college debt. And the media reports of students graduating with $100,000+ in debt are scary. However, they are not accurate, at least for undergraduates. Undergraduate students can only directly take on a maximum of $27,000 in debt ($31,000 if they take a fifth year of college).
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Why Retirement Planning is a Key Part of College Planning
It’s a common scenario: A child gets into a college that ends up being more expensive for a family than they expect – or more commonly, they have no idea what they will be expected to pay out of pocket for a specific school. Parents scramble to figure out how to pay for school and decide to divert money they are putting into retirement towards college.
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Why TVs Seem Cheaper and College More Expensive
A colleague shared a dramatic graphic with me a couple of days ago. While we know that the cost of college is growing faster than inflation, it is still a bit of a shock to see it graphically. And, the interesting thing is that the cost of TVs dropped dramatically in that same decade.
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