Financial teacher: How did you talk to my children about the cost of the college

This translated article depends on a conversation with Jolly BeckhamAssistant Vice President of Financial Education, Development and Strategy at Rolland Trust. It was released for length and clarity.

I grew up in a middle -class family and I was lucky because my parents are paying my educational price at New York University. New York University was still expensive in the nineties, but it was an expensive type that the middle class family could hold a moderate amount of sacrifice.

Today, as a financial teacher, I still consider myself from the middle class, but there is no way in which I can pay the cost of university education completely for my child, who is 18 and 21 years old. This is true for many families, thanks to the high cost of the college.

For this reason, I was very intended to talk to my children about paying the college price – since they started high school.

Here’s how we planned to manage costs.

Choose more schools at reasonable prices

Low profile schools can provide more affordable lessons for investment for many families. It may be difficult for children to think about these things because the colleges are very good in marketing. Sometimes, going to the “brand name” school is less than a grade and more spoil.

Ask your children about what they love in a well -known school. After that, he provided alternatives to the same feature, at a lower price point. Boston College is popular near the place where I live due to a football culture, but the same atmosphere can be found elsewhere for a much lower price.

I told my children to think about schools that may not be known or have every spoil but distinctive. These schools can give talented students more financial assistance and an opportunity for the program.

Understand what you can bear, and tell your children

As my children approach the age of the college, their father and I talked about the amount that we could pay towards their education. It depends on what works for each of our budgets.

It is expected that my children will pay the difference between the cost of their college and what we can cover their parents.

I recommend that parents be very honest about what they can afford, so that students can determine whether they are ready to take on the debts of student loans to cover other costs.

Get rid of guilt about what you cannot cover

Sometimes I feel guilty because I can’t pay for their full education. But this is realistic and what I can bear reasonably.

Although I was a financial teacher, I had no ways to start saving for the college until my teenage children were. When I did it, it was very simple: transferring a small part of each salary to the savings account that I launched on the “College”. The college’s savings plan was not 529, it was not much money, and it was not very sophisticated, but it was the beginning.

It is easy to criticize ourselves as fathers, but we need to admit that we often do our best to our children.

Apply for scholarships

Small scholarships and scholarships may seem slim against the huge draft law of the college, but it adds. You think $ 500 will not renew, but when you pay $ 80 to a book, you realize that $ 500 can be useful.

I have helped my children to apply by searching for opportunities, reminding them of the final dates, and encouraging them to work on applications. Sometimes, they were not happy to write another article, but I reminded them that it would take an hour and may get hundreds of dollars.

Request more financial aid

Once you apply for schools and receive your financial aid packages, you may notice significant differences in the amount of aid that the student gets from each school. If this is the case, you can ask the school to match what a similar school has provided.

I tried this twice. Once, I called the Financial Aid Office, and they said they could not make changes. But at another time, I was asked to send the electronic offer to the email, and they saw whether they could adjust the financial aid package. It does not hurt to ask.

Consider graduation early

My son is about to graduate from college early, which is a great saving to our family. He did this by taking lessons in the advanced position (AP) in high school and earning some additional credits during the college. It was a hard work, but it is likely that our family will save thousands of dollars.

The college raises many feelings for parents and children. There is a lot of pressure to get this step properly. It is useful to remember that this is just the first steps of many steps. Although it looks important, the decisions we make every day really affect our lives.