Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Planning Ahead for College

By Daniel Powell

Getting a game plan together before starting college is often a good idea and can be very beneficial to not only your education but your financial health.  A good place to start is looking at all colleges to choose from and seeing which ones are the most affordable.  A way to begin planning for the cost of college is using the ACT Financial Need Estimator.  The tool can help you to more effectively plan on meeting your college costs.  The tool also shows your eligibility for federal aid.  There are also a lot of savings programs and tax credits that need to be looked into to help determine the real cost of college.

When people do not plan ahead, many get trapped into still paying on their student loans while attempting to pay for college for their kids as well.  Another thing to remember, especially if starting to plan on how to pay for college for a young child, it must be remembered that educational expenses are increasing at an alarming rate.  It it estimated that the cost of an education for someone who is currently 2 years old to attend a private college will be nearly $400,000 by the time they are ready to go to school.

Other than in a financial sense, students need to start planning earlier in High School on what colleges they may want to attend.  Many wait until their senior year to try and make the decision.  The problem with this is that many colleges have specific admissions requirements.  Other colleges have specific ACT and SAT requirement scores to be considered for admission.  There may also be an early application deadline which is important to know because some students may be applying their junior year in high school.  If these important facts are not discovered early, paying for college will not be a problem because you may not be attending!

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