When you’re planning for your child’s education, it pays to understand how to invest your hard-earned dollars. Today there are many different types of plans with benefits for qualified education expenses. Here are the pros and cons of the most popular college funding vehicles currently available: Section 529 Savings Plans529 Savings Plans have […]

For many college-bound students, choosing just the right school can be even more stressful than taking the SAT exam. How do you choose, from among more than 3,500 American colleges and universities, the place where you’ll live and learn for four years?
Beyond that, how do you find the school you love — and can also […]

Paying for a child’s higher education is daunting, and the cost is only rising.
According to the College Board3, the average cost of tuition and fees at a private college was $22,218 for the 2006-2007 school year, up 5.9 percent from the year before. And 22 percent of students at private schools paid more than $30,000 […]

The good news: Your child has been accepted to several colleges. The bad news? Now you have to figure out how to pay for it.
For most families, at least some of the college bills are covered by financial aid. But rarely are two schools’ financial aid offers identical. That means parents have a lot to […]

Is your child hurtling toward college but you haven’t given more than a few anxious thoughts to how you’re going to pay for it?
Join the club.
For every parent who has been dutifully socking it away since the baby was in onesies, I seem to run into 10 more who feel like they’re playing an unwinnable […]

It’s difficult to save for two major expenses like retirement and a child’s education - how can you do it without being completely strained?
My wife and I recently bought a home and are now looking into getting a jump on saving for retirement and for our son’s future college tuition. But we’re unsure what to […]

Tips for helping high school students get ready for college
Between baseball practices and play rehearsals, it can be hard to find time to talk to your kids about college much less chat with their high school counselor. But with the number of applications to college setting records every year, it’s more important than ever. So […]

You’ve spent the past three hours in a hot car with your parents and teen sibling just to arrive at a potential college to be led around by a student who decided pointing at landmarks would be a better job than flipping burgers for food services. To avoid a word-for-word recitation of the school’s brochure, […]

If you’ve got kids, just thinking about those looming college tuition bills probably gives you an unpleasant feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Many folks fight through the nausea by steadily saving in a tax-advantaged 529 plan. These accounts come in two basic forms: college-savings plans (which allow people to invest after-tax dollars in a […]

A college education is an investment in your child’s future that pays big dividends. The Census Bureau reports that U.S. workers with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $54,689 in 2005, compared with $29,448 for workers with a high school diploma.
So it can make sense for students to borrow judiciously to finance their own […]