December is associated with giving gifts to loved ones, but often May and June are months where significant milestones like graduations and weddings occur. If you are making a gift of cash, there are a few questions you might want to ask yourself. How much is enough, how much is too much, and what’s the best way to give? Continue reading “How to Give the RIGHT Way”
Should you focus your financial plans on funding your children’s college education out-of-pocket or through parent loans? This is a question on the minds of many parents that I speak with on a regular basis (and also a question that I personally have to deal with having a third grader and a kindergartener growing up too fast). The retirement vs. education question gets even more challenging when children reach high school and the time horizon to save gets shorter. Continue reading “Should You Sacrifice Retirement to Pay For College Expenses?”
The process of building (or rebuilding) credit can seem like a catch-22. In order to be approved for a prime credit card, you first need to have an established and respected credit history. But how do you attain that history, if they won’t approve you in the first place?! Is co-signing your only choice? Continue reading “Cosigning For a Credit Card Doesn’t Equal Love”
Today’s blog is the last in a series addressing the different pieces of the college planning puzzle. Last week we looked at financial aid and basically determined that no matter how much or how little we save for college, financial aid (primarily in the form of loans) will help us make up the difference. That should provide some relief, since we would like to think that our children can go to whatever school they want to no matter how expensive. At the same time the idea of our kids (and us) being saddled with debt right out of college doesn’t always sit well with us. So how do we reduce our dependency on financial aid when the amount saved is not enough? This will probably come as a shock to you (and yes, I’m being facetious), but parents and students are expected to use some of their current income to help pay for college. Continue reading “College Planning: The Tax Benefits of Education”
