Cost cutting
Should You Attend Your Dream College?
This is the time of year when high school seniors and their parents begin reciting this age-old advice: Follow your dreams. Families tend to use this advice to justify their children attending expensive dream colleges even if these schools will require taking on crushing student debt. I am a huge advocate of families researching schools […]
5Dec2010 | Lynn | 0 comments | ContinuedCan You Shrink Your EFC?
My last college blog post focused on a dilemma that many families face. When parents calculate what their Expected Family Contribution is, they discover it’s far higher than they anticipated. If you missed the post, here it is: Is Your EFC Too High? Today I want to stay on that topic and share an email […]
29Nov2010 | Lynn | 0 comments | Continued
Why State Universities Aren’t Always a Bargain
If you’ve been a regular visitor to my college blog, you know that college price tags are meaningless. A $50,000 college, for example, could cost some families less than a $25,000 school. More families in my state of California are beginning to realize this. I bet that’s why expensive private schools such as Whitman College, […]
15Nov2010 | Lynn | 1 comment | Continued
Fighting Back Against Rising College Costs
College costs continue to rise (surprise, surprise), according to the latest statistics released by the College Board. The news is depressing, but not as awful as you might assume. As I’ve discussed in previous college blog posts, roughly two-thirds of college students receive scholarships or other price breaks so the sticker prices are meaningless. 2010-2011 […]
31Oct2010 | Lynn | 2 comments | Continued
Maximizing Financial Aid Awards
How do you maximize potential financial aid awards? Today I want to share with you a wonderful resource – TuitionCoach — that may be able to help you do just that. Until last week, you had to pay to use TuitionCoach, but not anymore. The site contains college funding videos, a library of financial aid […]
4Oct2010 | Lynn | 0 comments | Continued
Should Parents Help Pay for College?
Should parents help pay for college? For a lot of people who visit my college blog this is going to seem like a no brainer. There are, however, parents who are determined to foist the whole cost of college onto their kids. I can certainly understand why a mom or dad, who makes little money, […]
4Oct2010 | Lynn | 3 comments | Continued
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 | 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 | 2 comments | Continued
College Loan Debt Just Passed Credit Card Debt!
Americans now owe more money on their college loans than they do on credit cards. I just read about that scary reality on The Wall Street Journal’s website. According to Mark Kantrowitz, the financial aid guru over at FinAid and Fastweb, Americans owe about $829.7 billion in student loans. In comparison, consumers owe $826.5 billion […]
9Aug2010 | Lynn | 5 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 | 2 comments | Continued
