FYInance

Posts Tagged ‘college savings’

Interview with Dan Evertsz, a college planning specialist of the Bay Area. Going to college is getting more and more expensive. Many students graduate from school each year but not all of them go to college. While it is competitive to get accepted to a college of your choice, it is also hard to afford to go to college that you want to go to. Some people have to settle for cheaper colleges such as community colleges. You can save for college by opening college savings accounts such as the 529 plans or other types of educational savings accounts. Reference Point hostd by Dave Kocharhook (host and producer).

If you're new to FYInance, we're going to make it worth your while to subscribe to our FYInance RSS feed. It will keep you up to date, on your terms!

A while ago we discussed the 529 plans a little. I hope that some of you have had a chance to read up on college planning and the importance of having 529 plans. Bear in mind that a 529 plan is a college plan so for the purpose of this post, we will refer to 529 plans, we mean 529 plans and other educational plans. We will discuss the differences between a 529 plan and other college plan another day.

Why do we need a 529 plan?

If you are a student facing tough times in this economy, you would wish that you had a 529 plan. A 529 plan is a college plan that your parents or grandparents had saved up over a long period of time with tax benefits for you. When you withdraw the funds for college, you don’t pay taxes as long as you use the funds for college and qualified educational expenses.

We have here a story of a student who is going to college and is struggling to pay his bills while making grades at college. We have heard before that you can spend all of your time working to make ends meet but then you won’t have time to study and your grades will drop. If you have a college plan, you will be able to spend more time studying and not having to worry so much about money.

One student’s story of how he is struggling to be able to go to college

“I just graduated from high school and will be attending college this fall so I am in need of quite a bit of money. With this in mind, I went out to search for a job. At the beginning of my summer break, I applied to over 24 places and got offers from only 2.

I worked as a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza (they were the first people who offered) so I used up a lot of gas at work. Luckily, my employer helped pay for some of my gas, but the high gas prices still dug into my already small pay check (pizza delivery drivers are tipped employees so they don’t get full minimum wage).

Everything was going fine until a had an accident while delivering and, even though I was going only about 15 mph at the time of impact, I totaled my car and could no longer work for Domino’s.

I have put in several more applications to other places, but so far I have no job. Even Pizza Hut, who employs my sister and I know desperately needs help, hasn’t hired me yet. Now I fear that I may not get another job because I will be leaving my hometown for school. Granted, I haven’t had a lot of work experience, mainly because I wanted to keep my grades up so I could graduate valedictorian. I focused on getting into a good college, but because of the slow economy, I haven’t been able to keep a job to pay for my education.”

Thank you for sharing this story. Again, if you want to do some research into 529 plans or other college savings plans, this is a good website www.529-plan.info with lots of useful information of how to save for college and educational expenses.