Will I be able to afford the colleges that my student is interested in?
College is an unusual investment, to say the least, due to a multitude of factors:
- The large size of it
- The need to select target colleges without knowing the final price,
- The lack of transparency regarding what to expect with grants and scholarships
- Having multiple stakeholders (parents and students) involved in this emotional and peer-influenced decision
- The complexity in understanding the ROI between one college and another as it relates to your student.
The way to think about it is to first understand your budget and payment plan. It can be more than just dividing what you have in dedicated savings over 4 years. What will be the impact on your other needs, like retirement? Are there changes that you can make to expand what you can redirect to college? How much debt is too much for a parent or a student? What is my best strategy to pay? What else should I be thinking about as I embark on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next 4 years?
The second piece aims to build a financially balanced list. Just like a student will want to have a list of schools that have a range of acceptance possibilities, you will want to have this financially as well. This can be reached by having schools that meet that budget regardless of discounting. It can also come from understanding the likelihood of merit or need-based grants, which can substantially lower the sticker price. Online calculators and publicly available data offer mixed results in providing accurate projections. Campus Bound, along with its non-profit partner College Affordable, maintains results from thousands of awards from last year alone. These data points, along with other tools and decades of experience, can help you gain comfort that your list isn’t top-heavy financially or that you aren’t walking away from opportunities that could become financially viable.
Paying what amounts to several mortgage payments every semester is something you want to prepare for!
Contact Gregg at Campus Bound (gcohen@campusbound.com) for a free exploratory evaluation to help you think through your budget, aid possibilities, and other avenues that may be available to you to make college costs more reasonable.
Contact Gregg at Campus Bound (gcohen@campusbound.com) for a free exploratory evaluation to help you think through your budget, aid possibilities, and other avenues that may be available to you to make college costs more reasonable.