It’s October 1st – do you know why that’s important?
October 1st is the day the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) opens for the following school year. To say that slightly differently, October 1st 2021 is the day the FAFSA application for first year college bound students for the 2022-2023 school year becomes available. And if you’re a…
FAFSA changes timeline revised
I mentioned in my article on How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 3 – How much do colleges think you can pay? that there were changes coming for the 2023-2024 academic award year courtesy of the FAFSA Simplification Act (signed into law December…
Why should I get help with college shopping?
I’m a strong DIY’er. We don’t hire out our lawn mowing, or our house cleaning, our brush work, and we like to garden and hang clothes on the line. I like to put in elbow grease, understand something inside and out, and feel competent. But there are times when I…
How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 5 – How can they get done with college faster?
Last time, in Part 4, we covered ways to save money on college through strategic allocation of your assets. But one of the surest ways to pay less for college is to spend less time there. Finish For some students, this means graduating instead of dropping out. Everyone says “I…
How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 4 – How can I best arrange my assets?
In Part 3 of this series, we addressed how colleges calculate how much they think you can pay. Of course everyone wants to know, how can I pay the least amount for my college of choice? Unfortunately, as I’m sure you can guess based on the previous articles in this…
How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 3 – How much do colleges think you can pay?
As I covered in Part 2, you now know the steps involved in figuring out your college selection process, and your selected college will drive how much you have to pay. Now we’re really going to dig into #2 here today, how much colleges think you can pay, and what…
How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 2 – What are the steps to figuring this out?
As I covered in Part 1 of this series, what any given college will cost your family seems like an equation brewed by an evil wizard, written on decrepit scrolls in dead languages, and buried under the deepest ocean, such that you can only figure out the true cost of the…
How much will it cost for my child to go to college? Part 1 – why it costs so much
This used to be a fairly easy to answer question. You could find the college’s sticker price, the student pursued a bunch of scholarships before they started college, and the remaining was largely within reach for Mom and Dad to pay out of pocket; or, if the student worked hard,…
How has the college funding process changed since I was a student?
College isn’t like it was when you and I went, or when your parents went; at least, the paying for it part isn’t. What it used to be like: What it’s like now: There was a sticker price. There is a sticker price. The cost of college went up generally…
Happy May 29th, 529 awareness day
Student loan debt is a problem for many in our country. Specifically, for 54% of college students, to the tune of $1.6 trillion. While this is a multi-faceted problem, including the rising costs of college, transparent college pricing, the college shopping process, and college funding, one aspect of the solutions…