College Planning
A comprehensive approach to college planning, not only looks at how much a parent or grandparent needs to save, but also considers the different ways to pay for college and how to save on the overall cost of college. Whether it be utilizing a 529 savings plan or an after-tax brokerage account, navigating financial aid packages, leveraging scholarship opportunities, or paying back student loans - we have it covered for you here.
4 bone-chilling student loan mistakes to avoid
Being a fairly new resident to Jacksonville, Florida, and having not yet lived through a winter season, I didn't realize how cold it could get this time of year. I thought Florida was supposed to always be warm. Boy was I wrong.
Speaking of cold snaps, owning warmer clothes will never cure the chill I get every time I see a costly student loan mistake. These errors quite frequently cost a borrower $20,000 - $50,000. For higher education degrees, like doctors and lawyers, those mistakes can often exceed $100,000.
Unfortunately, I see too many young professionals mismanaging their student debt. The pattern is more recurring than I care to admit. Quite frankly, much of the mismanagement stems from borrowers being paralyzed to do anything. They are overwhelmed with the reality of managing 15 loans with 4 different lenders. Imagine managing your other debt this way, like a car loan or a mortgage... It would be a nightmare. The problem is, it truly is a nightmare if you carry a significant amount of student debt.
Having helped several clients overcome their own set of student loan problems, one of the best ways to get in front of the issue is to make more borrowers (and their parents) aware of what pitfalls they should be avoiding. Today's blog article will begin by examining the 4 most common student loan mistakes and what you can do to avoid those landmines. Then, I will present 2 case studies, as seen with my clients. That way current and future borrowers understand just how important it is to have a solid game plan in place.
4 MOST COMMON STUDENT LOAN MISTAKES
1) REFINANCING TOO SOON
The biggest mistake I commonly see with Federal student loans is a young professional that is too eager to lower their high interest rate debt through refinancing. On the surface, this makes complete sense because refinancing is how we have been conditioned as consumers. The impulse is to immediately reduce the interest cost with one of the big advertisers like SoFi or CommonBond. It's not a knock against these companies, but their brand awareness has made it such that the borrower fails to consider other alternatives, like debt forgiveness.
Essentially, there are 2 forms of debt forgiveness -- Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and long-term debt forgiveness (when you work in the private sector your debt gets cancelled in 20-25 years). Furthermore, there are 3 types of Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plans that are necessary for qualifying for debt forgiveness -- Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE), and Income Based Repayment (IBR). The big one, PSLF, is available to full-time employees (30+ hours) of a qualified public service organization (501.c.3). In order to qualify for PSLF, the borrower has to make on-time payments under PAYE, REPAYE, or IBR for 120 months and then any remaining debt balance gets forgiven, tax-free.
Why are making payments under PAYE, REPAYE, and IBR a good thing? Because monthly payments under PAYE and REPAYE are calculated by taking your income minus 1.5X the poverty rate (discretionary income) and multiplying that number by 10%, divided by 12. IBR uses the same formula, except that it is 15% of discretionary income. Unless you are making the big bucks, these payment plans will be far less than the 10-year standard repayment plan. Note, there are other nuances to these IDR plan that I am leaving out of today's article for the sake of brevity.
Assuming you are able to pay a lower amount under one of the IDR plans and qualify for PSLF, the odds are your savings will be greater than what you get from refinancing when your debt balance exceeds your annual gross income. In addition, the lower payments with an IDR plan can still be better for someone who can't afford the standard payment plan, and is able to get their debt forgiven through the long-termer options that take 240-300 months. I suggest using caution, as there are tax issues to watch out for. More on that later (see mistake #4).
The problem with refinancing is that once your loans are out of the Federal program, they are no longer eligible for debt forgiveness. Worse yet, the fallback provisions like forbearance and deferment are much less generous through the private lenders. In other words, if you lose your job, your Federal lender will allow you to stop making payments without defaulting on your loans, as long as you request forbearance. Furthermore, if a job layoff lasts for an extended period of time, you can select one of the IDR plans and earn credits towards debt forgiveness while you pay $0 every month. While I don't condone leaving your debts unpaid forever, I think it's very important for a borrower to understand the importance of the flexibility offered by the Federal program. A private lender, unfortunately, won't be as forgiving and usually put a limit of 3-12 months with their forbearance program.
I am also not saying don't refinance. In fact, you should probably consider refinancing any existing private lender debt -- loans originated at Wells Fargo, Sallie Mae, etc. What I am saying is make sure you evaluate the financial benefits of PSLF and long-term debt forgiveness before you submit an application to refinance.
2) FAILING TO (APPROPRIATELY) CONSOLIDATE FFEL LOANS
The Federal Family Education Loan program, otherwise known as FFEL, was a public-private student lending partnership at the state and local level. Additionally, FFEL was the second largest student lender behind the Direct loan program. However, on June 30, 2010, upon the passage of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, the FFEL lending program was discontinued.
Why does this yawn-worthy history lesson matter? Anyone who borrowed a student loan before 2010 likely has FFEL loans, unless that debt was since consolidated. The problem with FFEL loans is that they do not qualify for public service loan forgiveness. Furthermore, FFEL loans do not offer repayment under the lowest income-driven plans at 10%, which are REPAYE and PAYE. Instead, the only option available is "old" IBR, which is 15% of income.
Fear not, there is a solution. Consolidating FFEL loans allows that portion of debt to fall under the Direct Federal program, which is eligible for PSLF. It also allows the borrower to use REPAYE and possibly PAYE. If you want to minimize payments, you would much rather pay 10% of income than 15% of that same income.
The tricky part with consolidating FFEL loans is that the clock resets your payments back to 0. This matters if you are aiming to get your debt forgiven in 20-25 years and already accrued 7 years towards forgiveness. Consequently, the lower payments associated with REPAYE or PAYE need to be weighed against the forfeited number of months already earned towards debt forgiveness. If you aren't sure what to do, this is a good time to leverage the expertise of a financial advisor who understands the important details.
Let me save you from calling your loan service provider... That is if you want good advice. The agent on the other line will not help you run the calculations or provide the necessary analysis because they are not held to a fiduciary standard. Therefore, there is no legal obligation for that agent to act in your best interests. They are merely there to help service the loan. That's it. Even then, they are notorious for making life difficult.
3) SELECTING THE WRONG FEDERAL PAYMENT PLAN
Write this down and put it in safe place you will remember. There are 4 payment plans you should never select: Graduated, Extended, "New" IBR, and Income Contingent Repayment (ICR).
I can't tell you how many times I have seen a client or prospect in Extended or Graduated repayment plans because they wanted the lowest monthly payments. It makes a lot of sense because every penny matters in your younger years and these two plans often provide the lowest initial payments. However, the Extended and Graduated plans end up being the most expensive ones in the long-run. The kicker is that payments made under Extended and Graduated do not qualify for PSLF or long-term debt forgiveness. Meaning, when you switch to a new payment plan, all those payments you made under the Extended or Graduated plan did you very little good, other than maybe keep your interest costs from spiraling in the wrong direction.
Selecting "New" IBR as your payment plan is a bad idea because if you qualify for this plan you qualify for PAYE. PAYE is always better because when interest capitalizes, PAYE limits the amount of interest that gets tacked on to the loan to 10% of the balance. Whereas, interest capitalization with "New" IBR is uncapped. In layman's terms, PAYE's is less expensive than "New" IBR.
ICR is the last of these offenders. The only reason for anyone to select this repayment plan is if they have PARENT PLUS loans. Otherwise, avoid. If you are one of the few outliers, just know that payments are 20% of discretionary income vs. 10% - 15% with the other IDR plans.
4) NEGLECTING THE IMPACT OF TAXES & FILING SEPARATELY
From what I gathered in my conversations with friends and clients, there are a good number of young professionals who are planning to get their debt forgiven the long-term route in 20-25 years. Unfortunately, a large percentage of those I spoke with were unaware that when their debt is forgiven (without PSLF) the remaining loan balance is added to their taxable income the year it is forgiven.
Example. Let's say you are making $150,000 25 years from now and you have $90,000 in student debt being discharged. Well guess what... Your income for the year is now $240,000. Using the Trump tax reform rates, that extra $90,000 unexpectedly dropped a tax bomb of $29,400 on the borrowers lap. The key here is to make sure you have a savings plan in place to pay the tax bill later on. Otherwise, little Johnny might have to finance his college tuition and suffer the same hardships you once had to live through.
The other big tax mistake is for a young married couple to file their tax returns separately with the sole purpose of reducing monthly payments. This can be a good strategy, however, simply filing separately while failing to consider the tax implications is a huge no-no.
To get an idea, the general "formula" for deciding the cost-benefit of filing jointly versus separately is to compare the total tax costs against the annual cash savings that resulted from lowering monthly payments on your student debt. What I mean by total tax costs is that the borrower needs to project the potential tax liability at the end of their loan period (20-25 years), as well as calculate the annual tax increase/decrease for filing their returns as married separately. Anything in the surplus side would suggest that filing separately is a good financial plan.
OTHER MISTAKES WORTH NOTING:
Forgetting to recertify your income-driven repayment plan on your anniversary date. Failing to certify automatically bumps your payments up to the standard 10-year payment plan.
Not verifying PSLF credits and assuming your employer is a 501.c.3.
Taking on too much private debt.
Allowing interest to accrue, snowball, and then capitalize.
CASE STUDY EXAMPLES
Congratulations if you have read everything so far. The key to getting your student debt under control is you need to commit the time and research to get a plan in place, which will help you make the right decisions. To that end, let's apply your newfound knowledge and see exactly how these student loan traps affect your bottom line.
Real Life Example #1: Refinancing Too Soon
One of my younger clients, Suzie, came to me with $194,100 in student debt at an interest rate of 6.8%. She worked for The Ohio State University (501.c.3) and planned to do so for the foreseeable future. She made a $35,000 salary during her veterinary fellowship, which increased to $125,000 in 12 months after she was fully certified. She was in the 10-year standard payment plan with a projected total cost was $268,000. Compare that to refinancing with a private lender at 4% for the same 10-years and the total interest savings of $32,000 looked like a no-brainer.
Note, refinancing was the route we agreed to move forward with after my initial analysis... That is until I stumbled across an XY Planning Network podcast with guest, Heather Jarvis, a national student loan guru. It was at that point I realized Suzie and I were about to make a big mistake. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for Heather's 3-day course on student loans, so that I knew exactly how to help Suzie navigate a much more complex decision than I originally anticipated. Upon regrouping and drafting a more complete analysis, Suzie and I determined she was eligible for PSLF and that her new payment plan (PAYE) would save her a total of $158,000. In other words, had Suzie refinanced without careful consideration she could have cost herself $126,000!
Real Life Example #2: Tax Filing Status and Failing to Consolidate FFEL Loans
It's your lucky day. My next clients, Jerry and Elaine Seinfeld offer a two-fer. Jerry and Elaine are married with 2 kids enrolled in daycare. Jerry is an attorney pulling in an annual salary of $92,000 and Elaine is a 2nd-grade teacher making $41,000. The Seinfelds came to me with $284,000 in student debt -- all tied to Jerry. They were making monthly payments via the "old" IBR plan, and half of Jerry's loans were from the FFEL program. Basically, the Seinfelds needed help right away.
Why the urgency? The Seinfelds chose to file income taxes separately because Jerry received a $10,000 pay raise the prior year. That same tax year they took an early withdrawal from Jerry's IRA to pay off some medical expenses. Meaning Jerry's IBR payments were going up by $250 per month. Also, Jerry was on the fast track to making partners at his firm, which meant substantially higher raises (and higher loan payments) in the near future.
This string of events caused the Seinfelds to panic because their cash flow was very tight paying for 2 kids in daycare, along with a large student loan burden looming over their heads. Essentially, they felt trapped and it caused the Seinfelds to make a hasty decision to file their taxes separately. A decision that meant they would be forfeiting a $4,200 tax refund. Here's the problem, the Seinfelds didn't compare the cost of filing separately to the difference in monthly payments with the student debt. Remember, their payments went up $250/month, which is $3,000 annually. $3,000 is less than $4,200 or a difference of $1,200 per year. Meaning that the Seinfelds should have never filed taxes separately, to begin with. Some might scoff at the obvious, but the problem is most people don't take the time to slow down and carefully analyze their entire financial picture.
The second area of opportunity with the Seinfeld case was consolidating Jerry's FFEL loans. Restructuring the FFEL loans meant that all of Jerry's Federal debt qualified for the REPAYE plan. Therefore, Seinfeld's monthly payments went from 15% to 10% of discretionary income. This bumped their payments down to about where they were before we met. In other words, the Seinfelds saved $250/month in monthly payments with REPAYE vs. IBR. And don't forget, they saved $4,200/year in taxes. All in all our comprehensive analysis projected that the Seinfelds would save about $97,000 between their student loans and taxes over the next 25 years.
GET TO THE ROOT OF IT
The complexity and administrative burden that is inevitable with student debt is a tall order for most. For anyone feeling shackled by their debt, not having a plan is planning to fail. More importantly, don't let fear of not knowing where to start to get in the way of taking action. By removing the root of your financial problems, you can begin living a more prosperous life.
With a student loan plan in place, it becomes a lot easier to buy the new house you had your eye on, pay for your children to go to college one day, and eventually retire with a substantial nest egg.
For additional resources, check out the Ultimate FAFSA Guide.
Choosing the best 529 plan
529 plans grow in popularity due to the importance of children attending college to increase their professional prospects, all while the total expense of attending college has increased at a rapid rate. Ever since the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 which birthed these plans, the usage of 529 plans has increased due to their ability to grow investments tax free and be used on qualified educational expenses without incurring any taxes for selling those investments. So, the question for most people is how do you chose one?
Prepaid Vs. Savings 529 Plans
Prepaid Plans
Prepaid means that you’re locking in a certain level of tuition rates so that even if the rates increase dramatically between now and when your child goes to school those increases in tuition won’t affect you. This is an attractive option for people who don’t want to worry if they’ll be able to pay for their child’s future tuition. The attractiveness of prepaid plans speaks to those who don’t want to wonder what if and have a guarantee. The state of Florida backs all prepaid plans which means that as long as the state is solvent then your pre-paid plans should hold up their end of the bargain. Unless prices rise extremely quickly it is likely more suitable for people to utilize a savings 529 plan due to the fact that you have more investment flexibility and the ability to use those funds on more than just tuition. Although there are dormitory plans that are now available as well through Florida’s pre-paid plan. The plan can be portable to other states as they will pay the same amount to out of state schools that they would pay to in-state schools. The issue here is that pre-paid plans don’t pay their own schools a very high number, so the plan becomes less effective once used outside of the home state.
Prepaid plan example:
Parents buying their newborn a 4-Year University Pre-paid plan
$186.28 per month over 223 payments = $41,540 (total paid into plan)
The $186 payment is generated by taking today’s general tuition rate and adding a yearly increase of roughly 2.5%.
$41,450/4 = $10,385 Yearly Tuition Average
$6,381 per year tuition rate at UF currently. Applying an annual 2.5% rate over 18 payments yields $9,952 in the freshmen year and $10,717 in their senior year.
Conclusion:
If college tuition prices increase more than 2.5% over that time frame then pre-paid saved you the difference. If they increase less than 2.5% then you actually paid more into the plan than you get out by utilizing pre-paid. Over the last 5 years the University of Florida in-state tuition has not changed. If you believe in-state tuition rate increases won’t be in line with national historical averages of 5% before they attend college then a prepaid plan may not be for you.
Savings Plans
A savings 529 plan allows you to save money for college at a contribution rate of your choosing. It is not a contractual agreement like a prepaid plan is. If you want to contribute a certain amount one month and a different one the next you can. This can be a negative, in particular for those who aren’t good savers. So if using a savings plan be sure to use a calculator to help you decide how much to put away to stay on track for your end goal. In a 529 savings plan the money that you contribute to the plan then gets invested among different investment choices that your 529 provider will make available to you. You can choose to then invest that money in a high growth/high risk fashion, or in a more conservative/low risk fashion. Generally, it is wise to become more conservative as you get closer to the date in which you student is about to attend college so the value of the account is less at risk when it will be needed most. Then upon time it is needed to draw on the 529 plan you can either transfer funds directly to the school, or via check to you or the student, to use on a whole list of qualified educational expenses. The value of the account will be applicable in-state as well as out of state as long as the school is an accredited institution which allows the plan to keeps it value independent of which school your student attends.
Savings plan example:
Parents buying a newborn a 529 savings plan
Place $186.28 per month into the plan for the next 223 months until their child attends college.
If that 529 plan yields on average a 4% net return then the parent will end up with $61,491 to use for educational expenses.
Conclusion:
The savings plan can yield considerably better results than a prepaid plan, but also comes with its own fair share of risk. Be sure to manage the investments appropriately. Also be careful with over funding the plan since withdrawals not related to education are penalized by 10% on top of being charged income tax on any investment gains.
The thing to note though in using a 529 savings plan is that there will be fees for investment managers, account maintenance, etc. so you want to make sure that you pick the right one as there are many choices.
State(Direct) or Broker sold Plan? Which State plan is the best?
Normally 529 plans are sold are from brokerage companies like Blackrock and Merrill Lynch, or sold directly from the states themselves. Generally, it’s cheaper to work through the states directly, but it’s important to look at the complete set of fees when comparing one plan versus the other. A great study comparing fees showcases how the plans sold directly from the states themselves compare to each other.
Being residents of Florida grants plenty of advantages outside of a long summer. The absence of any state taxes gives investors a lack of incentive to use the Florida 529 plans. In many other states the ability to deduct 529 contributions from your taxes pushes people to utilize their home state sponsored 529 plan, but due to no state income taxes here in Florida we can pick from any 529 plan that best fits our needs. If you don’t live in Florida you can look up whether or not your state’s plan gives tax deductions for contributions to your in state plan.
We often push our clients toward using the my529 plan sold by the state of Utah due to their ease of use and low fees imposed by the plan and its investments. This plan year after year has been rated as a top plan among the many choices. By no means though is this the only plan that makes sense for people to use.
Whether it’s a prepaid plan or savings plan, or a combination of both, make sure to have the conversation early as to which is right for you. The prepaid plan is a great way to hedge against rapid tuition increases while savings plans will grant you more investment choices and opportunities of growth. Just be sure to check the fees and such that come along with the savings plans.
How Much is Too Much Income to Qualify for Financial Aid?
Financial aid is utilized by about two-thirds of full-time students each year through the forms of grants and scholarships, and yet only 75% of families actually fill out the necessary FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) forms to garner that money. The most common answer as to why parents and students didn’t is that they felt they wouldn’t qualify for any aid. Sadly, there are a lot of people who fall victim to this assumption and leave free money on the table that could otherwise go towards reducing the price of college tuition.
Income is the quickest way that someone will typically disqualify themselves out of financial aid, but at what point does that happen? To answer this question let's first try and understand exactly how financial aid is calculated. Plainly put the amount of financial aid that someone qualifies for when looking at any specific school is determined by two main variables; the quoted cost of attendance to that school (including tuition, fees, room & board, books, etc.), and your families EFC (Expected Family Contribution), which is calculated by a standard federal formula.
COA (cost of attendance) – EFC (expected family contribution) = Financial Aid Qualification
So how does income play into all of this? It tends to be the variable that most drastically affects your EFC calculation. A large percentage of parents' "discretionary" income, anywhere in the range of 22% to 47%, is taken into account towards your EFC. There is an amount of the parent's income that is not taken into account ranging from $18,580 to $39,430 (refer to Table A3 below) which depends on the total amount of kids and how many of them are in college. Once income goes beyond those allowances it starts lowering your financial aid qualification.
Here are a few rough guidelines that can help you understand how your total income will affect aid:
For any amount above your income protection allowance, roughly every $10,000 in extra income lowers your financial aid qualification by another $3,000.
Once the income is above $100K roughly 1/5th to 1/4th of income will be counted towards your EFC. As your income increases that fraction of your income also increases and can even creep towards 1/3rd or more.
With only one child attending college normally an income above $125K will disqualify you from financial aid qualification at a public university, and about double that, or $250K in income will disqualify you from garnering financial aid.
IMPACT OF FAMILY SIZE ON FINANCIAL AID
Another very important aspect to note is that if you have multiple kids attending school at the same time, then you as a parent can split your EFC number between each of your children. So, if your EFC was $30,000, however, another one of your children began attending college, their respective EFC numbers would now be $15,000. If you didn’t qualify for financial aid before your other child went to college, it may make sense to apply again now that you have more kids in college.
HIGHER TUITION IS BETTER FOR THE EFC
The other factor in this equation that will allow you to make more money while still qualifying for financial aid is the cost of attendance at the school that you are applying to. If you are applying for a school that has a cost of $65,000 versus a school that costs $25,000 you can make a lot more money and still qualify for financial aid at the more expensive school, where the cheaper school may not grant you any.
MIND THE DETAILS
Another factor that is very important to note the timing of income received. Income on the financial aid form is pulled from the prior-prior year to the filing. So, a student attending their first year of college in the fall of 2019 would have to use their parent's income from their 2017 tax filings.
The mismatch of timing grants people the ability to purposely receive bonuses, inheritances, retirement plan distributions, and even capital gains distributions in certain years to maximize their ability to qualify for financial aid. So be sure to avoid any artificial increases in income that can negatively impact financial aid. You can attempt to delay receipt of those incomes or offset gains with losses as a couple ways to defray the effect of extra income on financial aid.
Once your child is beyond the second semester of their sophomore year income received becomes irrelevant to their financial aid, but be aware of how it may affect younger children if you have any. In order to illustrate some of these principles, we’ve laid out a simple example.
Example:
A couple living with two kids makes $162,000 per year. Their oldest is in college finishing his freshman year and currently doesn’t receive any financial aid going to a school that has a cost of attendance of $30,000. Their second child is a rising junior and looking at attending a school with the cost of attendance of $60,000. The oldest in his first two years of college didn’t receive any financial aid because of the following:
$30,000 (cost of attendance) – (¼ * $162,000 = $40,500) = -$10,500 (financial aid qualification)
The EFC estimate is purely based on income and no other assets. This is purely an estimate using the general rule of thumb stated earlier. Now when the second child is going off to college if we go through the same exercise for both kids the financial aid qualification comes out positive:
Child 1
$30,000 (cost of attendance) – (¼ * $162,000 = $40,500/2= $20,250) = $9,750
(financial aid qualification)
Child 2
$60,000 (cost of attendance) – (¼ * $162,000 = $40,500/2= $20,250) = $39,750 (financial aid qualification)
Here we can see how not only more kids in college can help qualify for more financial aid, but how the cost of the school selected can greatly alter your financial aid qualification. A family that previously didn’t qualify for any financial aid with their first child in college by himself, now qualify for up to $48,950 between their two children. Their income limited them initially, but this showcases how much certain factors can alter the idea that their income excluded this family from qualifying for financial aid.
If this couple was expecting a large bonus payment, let's say in the realm of $30,000 in the current year, I'd suggest they delay their bonus to the following year if possible to ensure that their oldest child can still qualify for financial aid. Utilizing the rule of thumb stated earlier a bonus of that size could eliminate around $9,000 ($30,000 X .3) worth of financial aid.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY
The easiest way to tell “when do I make too much” is by taking the total cost of attendance between the schools your kids are attending and seeing if 1/4 of your income is greater than that amount. In the example above the total cost of attendance for the two children is $90,000 (30,000 + 60,000). So someone who has a $360,000 income (4 X 90,000) is likely making too much money to explore any financial aid strategies.
Once you’re above and beyond that mark then it may be time to look towards other strategies to aid with the net cost of college. Understanding that along with the fact that it's important to always apply for financial aid even if you are beyond those amounts is critical. Life circumstances can change on a dime, so ensuring that you filled out the necessary forms can leave the door open to receiving aid, should your financial situation change.
When should i start saving for my kid’s college?
College has now become the largest purchase that a family will make outside of buying a home. The pace of college price increases has been outpacing the increases we’ve seen in wages by a large margin which has made the idea of saving for a child’s college education even more daunting. As advisors who specialize in college funding we’re often asked by the parent’s on when should they start funding for college or if what they have put away already sets them up well for their kid’s future. The truth of it is you should start early and save often, but no one wants to hear that answer because it’s the obvious one that adds no value to most people. The reality of it is that depending on what stage of life your children are in, the answer can vary widely.
Early Planning Stage (0 – 5 Years):
At this stage usually, parents are more focused on paying for daycare over starting to save for college. For those of us lucky to have the extra income, then yes, if you can start now you technically don’t have to save as much over the long haul due to your money having more time to work for you. A $258 per month investment for a newborn can yield $100K by the time a kid is 18. If you waited until that child is 10 years old then you’d be required to put away $814 per month to yield a similar end result.
If you start saving at this stage usually the most prudent way to do so is through what is called a 529 plan which acts like Roth IRA where it’s funded with after-tax funds and comes out tax-free. 529 funds only come out tax-free though if used for education-related expenses. It’s a great way for everyone from grandparents, parents, and friends to put money away for a child’s education. Learn more about how to select a 529 plan from our previous post.
All that being said though for those who can’t afford a large monthly contribution, just opening an account and tossing in extra money when there is some can be helpful in the end. For parents who expect their kids to stay in-state, or pay some of their way towards college, it might make sense to put more money towards their own goals and keep money liquid for other large expenses.
Grade School Stage (6 – 13 Years):
For all of the parents who live around us in Nocatee, FL this is usually a great time to start saving for college because you generally can redirect some of the funds that were going to day-care, that is freed up through public school, to saving for college. You’re also likely making more in income as you grow along in your career, so even if you are utilizing private education you still may be able to begin prudently saving.
It’s smart to start getting a gauge for what kind of student your kids might be. We never know what school our kids are going to attend until they ultimately pick one later on, but as parents we can tell whether our child is very social and likely to attend a large state university, or extremely intelligent and destined to attend an Ivy University, or is extremely artistic and bound to go to an art school like SCAD (The Savannah College of Art and Design). As parents get a better understanding of the type of schools that their kids are likely to attend, we can use that as a signal for them to start funding more or less towards their kid’s 529 plans. It’s important to have a target for how much you want in a 529 plan by the time your child goes to college because we don’t want to overfund those accounts due to penalties on withdrawals that don’t get used for education. Our target amount of suggestion for parents is to have 50%-75% of the funds you want to provide for your child in a 529. If you want to provide for all of your child’s college cost and you’re thinking it’ll be an Ivy League University that number is drastically different than if you only plan on funding 50% of your child’s college cost and they are more likely to go to a state University.
Late Stage Planning (14 – 18 Years):
At this point is when the cost of an upcoming college education becomes real and fast approaching. We find that it’s not until now that most parents start to put real thought into how are we going to foot the tuition bill once our child goes off to school. Even for the parents who have planned well for college expenses, there are savings to be had in this stage whether it’s through financial aid, scholarships, tax strategies, or other avenues. Now is a good time for un-prepared and well-prepared parents alike to really start putting together an actual college payment plan. It absolutely helps when there are some healthy savings to work with but I view putting together all the late-stage planning pieces as the big game and the earlier stages as the practice beforehand. It makes the game easier to handle, but you still have to go out and get a victory (or make sure that you walk away with spending the lowest dollar amount possible in this case).
In late-stage planning it’s important to continue putting money away towards funding college, but the ultimate money saver is lowering the actual net cost of college for your child. If you get around to focusing on this stage as early as your freshman or sophomore year, it allows for an open playbook when we are looking for ways to cut down the net cost of college. Once you pass the fall of your junior year certain options begin to not be available to us, so it’s important to not let it get past that point if at all possible. For parents who don’t plan on putting money towards their children’s college efforts, this is still an important time to sit your kids down and help them figure out their game plan.
Better Late Than Never
As mentioned earlier typically the answer to “when should I start saving for my kid’s college?” is answered by “the sooner the better”, but I think the more helpful answer is “it’s better late than never”. There are even certain tax strategies that can prove helpful when the student is already enrolled in college. Everyone’s situation is unique but understanding your situation and having the desire to position yourself as best as possible can be done at any point with your children and their education.
Why Ponte Vedra Students Face a Harder & More Expensive Road to College
After the country had begun to gradually move past using affirmative action for admissions purposes many years ago the College Board implemented a program called Strivers. This program tried to help students who came from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds and included race as a datapoint. If the student exceeded their expected average score by over 200 points on the SAT, they were labelled as a striver. This helped many students with minority backgrounds since they were often expected to score less. The program was faced with tons of scrutiny and was eventually scrapped, mainly because it took race into account.
20 years later the College Board circled back to improve on their previous intentions through what is known as the Adversity Index. The new index is more in-depth and avoids any inclusion of race as a datapoint. It attempts to help students standout to colleges who may have overlooked them due to the fact that they came from an underprivileged background. The scores are currently being used by 50 colleges and is set to be used by 150 this year. The following year it is planned to be used by all colleges, and major schools such as Yale already view it as a powerful tool for their admissions process. Yale has nearly doubled its low-income and first-generation college students to about 20% of admitted students through implementing use of these scores from the College Board.
The score itself looked to take into account multiple factors across the environment of students’ neighborhood, family, and high school and then provide that information to colleges. The previous adversity score which was given used a scale from 1 to 100. The actual way the score was calculated is kept proprietary and the scores weren’t even being reported to the students themselves. That is until recently that families spoke of their outrage with the idea of the adversity score.
The College Board agreed that they may had overstepped in their ability to simplify someone’s background with a single numerical score, so as of recently they have decided to make small amendments to their adversity scores. They still stand behind their choice to try and amend the inequality that seemingly was perpetuated through SAT scores as seen in the graph, but they made the following changes to try and better the outcome.
One, they will begin to reveal scores to students and families. Two, they are now reporting individual scores for the neighborhood and for the school adversity scores separately. Lastly, they are going to alter the process in which the score is determined. Overall though the idea and principles that the College Board was trying to push are still being implemented.
With these changes occurring the question becomes who cares? How does this affect me? The reality of it is that upper middle-class area like ours in Nocatee, FL are put into a hard situation when it comes to getting accepted into colleges of their choice. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted assistant vice president for academic affairs at Florida State was quoted saying “If I am going to make room for more of the [poor and minority] students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble,”. And that’s coming from FSU, nonetheless, upper-echelon schools that certain students may be striving to attend outside of the state. This kind of pressure being created from different sources such as the adversity score has placed students, parents, and guidance counselors alike into finding outside help in terms of getting students into their school of choice. This is the kind of pressure that pushed parents into falling victim to the recent college admissions scandals out in California that were so publicized. In turn, parents have turned to hiring tutors, test prep assistance, independent educational consultants, and even athletic recruiting aids. The need for extra help is adding to the already exceedingly high price of attending college making the idea of saving on the cost of college that much more important.
Whether or not you view these scores as an overall positive or overall negative to the admissions process, the reality is they exist and make it harder for students from this area to get into the schools of their choice. The extra help to get into college is well worth it, mainly because it can open more doors from a college selection standpoint and opens more doors to scholarships and other money from schools. If an SAT test prep counselor can boost your score from 1300 to 1330, not only will it increase your chances of getting accepted to the University of Alabama, but it can yield you over $20,000 extra over the 4 years of undergraduate education if you came from high school with a 3.5 GPA or higher. Those are extremely meaningful dollars especially when trying to balance paying for a student’s college education versus saving for other goals such as retirement.