Cost cutting
Hiding College Assets in Life Insurance
Wednesday was surreal. I got up before dawn and schlepped up to Ontario, CA, to attend an educational conference of a new organization called the National College Advocacy Group. I’ve listened in on some excellent webinars that the NCAG has hosted and this was the first time that I had an opportunity to meet college […]
18Aug2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 8 comments | Continued
How to Find Cheap College Textbooks
It’s back-to-school season, which means college students are on the prowl for cheap textbooks. The average college student spends more than $1,100 a year on college textbooks. With textbook prices rising twice as fast as inflation during the past 20 years, I’d sure be looking for cheap textbooks if I was a student. There are […]
17Aug2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 2 comments | Continued
8 Ways to Cut College Costs
College costs sure are daunting, but the sticker prices are meaningless. I recently wrote about how my son and the other two boys in his high school carpool shrank their college costs dramatically. The tuition for the three boys for the coming year totaled a whopping $136,500, but they received grants from their respective liberal […]
8Aug2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 4 comments | Continued
Get The College Solution for Free
I just learned from my publisher that the Kindle edition of my book, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price, will be free next week. That’s right, The College Solution on the Kindle will be FREE from Aug. 9 to Aug. 14. Normally the Kindle version […]
7Aug2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 3 comments | ContinuedA Cheat Sheet for Repaying Student Loans
If you have questions about repaying a student loan, Mark Kantrowitz, the financial aid wizard over at Fastweb, the scholarship search engine, has written a very handy guide on the topic. His student-loan repayment cheat sheet is hot off the press and full of invaluable information. Here are some of the topics that Repaying Student […]
9Jul2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 2 comments | ContinuedWhat is the Best Student Loan? Here’s the Answer
What is the best student loan? I got an email this weekend from a dad who was hoping to get the answer to that question. His son needed to borrow for the last year of college. That was an easy question to answer. The best education loan available is the federal Stafford loan. There are […]
4Jul2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 0 comments | Continued
The True Cost of College
Before I got sucked into writing about colleges — for three college blogs no less! — I spent most of my time in front of my Mac writing personal finance stories. (This blog, by the way, started out as a personal finance blog more than three years ago.) Since the mid 1990s, I’ve written countless […]
2Jul2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 0 comments | Continued
Looking for Private Colleges That Use the FAFSA
Thought I’d share my response to a message that I received today from a mom, who was interested in finding private colleges that just use the Free Application for Federal Student or FAFSA. Here is Patrice’s question: Is there a way to determine which private colleges use the FAFSA method for financial aid? I would […]
30Jun2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 1 comment | Continued
New College Cost Calculators: What You Need to Know
Most parents aren’t going to pay full price for college. College costs aren’t nearly as high as the official sticker prices. According to the College Board, two-thirds of families will capture a price discount on college costs. Too bad parents and teenagers don’t know this. If they did, it would certainly expand the college choices […]
25Jun2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 2 comments | ContinuedCollege Choices for Teens of Divorce
During my last two college blog posts, I’ve examined a couple of college case studies. In yesterday’s post, I looked at some possible colleges choices for Lucienne, a brilliant student out here on the West Coast: College Case Study: Great Colleges for a Smart Girl In the first post, I introduced John, who aced his […]
23Jun2010 | Lynn O’Shaughnessy | 1 comment | Continued
