(For the sake of brevity, I have included 4 here and the rest will follow the next time.)
The answers to these questions are different for each family and there are no right or wrong answers. Your family is unique and your needs are different from your neighbor.
All we want is for the parents and the student to be on the same page so that there are no surprises once the student has been accepted at the college of their dreams. It is always a lot better to have had some of these discussions way in advance in order to manage expectations.
1. Parents – Have I had a discussion with my spouse as to who is paying for college?
Some parents want to pay for everything for college because that is what their parents did for them, or they want their student to be able to focus solely on their studies.
Other parents would like their students to have some skin in the game with some loans.
Yet other parents want their students to have some loans, and then would be willing to pay them off for the student should they get through college in 4 years.
2. Do I have a number in mind of what College might cost?
This is a difficult thing to figure out in advance because we never know what college will cost until we have the final offer from the school the student wants to attend – AFTER NEGOTIATION. (I will address the negotiation at a later date, but suffice it to say that there needs to be a proper strategy way in advance in order to have the ability to negotiate)
Typically I ask parents what they think college might cost and it is a tough thing to answer definitively. Perhaps we should think in terms of what we would be willing to pay, and then adjust the college choices to that. Sometimes students get accepted to expensive colleges with some pretty good Endowment money which brings the cost to an acceptable level for the family.
3. Have we had a discussion amongst ourselves as to how much we are willing to pay for college?
It is important for us to have an idea and for the student to know when making college choices. We want to set expectations BEFORE they get into their dream school and we have to tell them that we cannot afford it. No parent or student wants that.
4. Have we added inflation into those calculations?
UC schools announced last year that they were going to systematically raise tuition by 5% over the next few years. For some colleges it will be more than that, but some colleges are desperately trying to rein in costs for future years. It is vital for us to do our planning with inflation in mind. A $30,000 cost of attendance school will be $34,728 in year 4 with a 5% inflation rate. Inflation will have added $9,303 over the 4 year period.
These things are why we do what we do at College Planning America.
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