Saving on the Cost of College with Brad Baldridge
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Planning for college is more complex and expensive than ever. From saving strategies to understanding the incidents of financial aid and scholarships, there are critical decisions that can save or cost you thousands. Today, we're gona dive deep into the biggest mistakes families make when planning for college or student loans and how to avoid them.

And then at the end, i'll share a few tricks i've been using to put five twenty nine contributions on a credit card. So whether you're just starting to save or navigating the process with your high school lar, this episode will give you all the tools and tactics need to do IT right? I'm Chris chance.

If you enjoy this episode, please share with a friend or leave a comment or review. If you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click follow or subscribe. Now let's get into IT right after this.

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Just go to all the hacks, dock com flash mali newly for twenty percent off, or use the promotion de all the hacks again, that's all the hacks. Dot come slash mari nui M A U I N U I and the promotion de all the hacks for twenty percent off. The healthier read me. What do you think the biggest mistakes people make our when IT comes to planning in pain for college.

probably the biggest one would be starting too late and not realizing what they're getting into when I want to college was very simple. You're seeing your year, you visited a college or two, you took the test once and then you just signed up and off you want and you didn't spend a lot of time and effort into the whole process.

The next generation are going to spend a lot more time, a lot more effort, is a bigger deal and also cost a whole lot more. I, about my old A, C, T, were talked about. The cost at some of the colleges I was of looking at was six thousand dollars.

In the states school was two thousand dollars. IT was much more affordable, and he wasn't a big deal because of IT. Now, when you're spending twenty five, fifty hundred thousand dollars or more per child to educate them, you want to make sure he doing IT right. The first time a parent hearing, you know, I didn't pick the right major, I didn't pick the right school, I need to start over, I lost a year or two is not something any parent wants to hear. I think that's the big drugs of IT is there's a lot you can do and most people need the time to figure that out and get involved.

And how early should someone start thinking about this?

Let's talk about the time. And because i'd like to divide things into what I call early stage planning and late stage planning. So early stage planning as college of someday i've got a four year old, we've got some mexica cash flow.

Maybe we should save IT in bus for college. And then we get to what I call late stage college planning. Now you get a high school software, junior, senior, and you're there. And you may have been a great job of saving a big pile of money, but you're still not done right.

You get a lot of work to do around visiting colleges, figuring out just because I have IT do I have to spend IT should I spend IT how much is a reasonable amount to spend for college? Are the private worth IT are the public worth IT? All that work that needs to be done using loans to fill the gaps, fill out financial.

That should start, in my opinion, freshman software, especially for your first because it's a learning curve of while I need understand, will we qualify for need based date? Will we qualify for merit? And that alone is a very loaded question because they can get complicated depending on the colleges.

You're looking at your financial situation, academus of your student, right? If you've got the academic rock star, they have a lot more options and can get a lot more scholarships, get a lot more colleges. What if you have A B student or the c student? There are still colleges that are right and a good fit for your student. IT changes, though, from one student to the next.

I would imagine that the early planning before that high school mark, the primary thing you can do is really think about whether you're onna save in a different way. Is there a lot more to do other than saving and deciding where to save?

I think that's probably IT. And then be the amount that you need to say, right? Harvard to approach one hundred thousand dollars year, and the other elle's schools are, but a lot of families don't pay one hundred thousand dollars.

So a lot of financial advisers get this wrong, right? They look up the list Price of a college and they say, okay, with the list Price seventy five thousand. So based on the math, you need to save twelve over a month for the next eighteen years or something crazy like that.

Then that turns out, well, actually, you get up pretty substantial scholarship at some of these colleges. So seventy five thousand should have been forty. Of course, most people when they hear that twelve hundred, and I say I got three kids at thirty six hundred, i'm not interested. Anyway, there's a few that would do IT, but most families are not saving like they're gona hit those goals and ably shouldn't be in a lot of cases.

I think my personal strategy has been there is probably a really wide range of what college could cost and tie up the low end of that range in an account like a five twenty nine seems to make sense.

But with a little bit of uncertainty on so many things, what does college look like? Does your kid go to college? How much does the cost in the future? I'm OK if there's a slightly less optimal tax outcome for some of the money i'm saving, knowing that I might not even need IT for college.

So if I backed into what does the most expensive college in america, adJusting for inflation, dated back to how much I need to put in each month, I don't want to over fund to the point that I might just be stuck there. And you probably know this Better than me. What happens if you have a bunch of money in a five twenty nine and you don't need IT for your children? And let's just assume you're not at generation wealth level and want to save IT for future generations. You usually have to pay a penalty to take IT out is right.

right? If you take that out for non education purposes, you have to pay some taxes and the penalties. So it's not advisable in those situations.

There's ways do in wind that you can take money out up to the amount of scholarships that your student receives. You can switch IT from child, child within the family, and you can get broader than just brothers and sister. You can go to nieces and enough views.

You can shift IT into a rough I R. A. Now there's some new rules for that. The account needs to be fifteen years old.

So there's lots of things you can do, quite Frankly, is not a problem I deal with very often. Much more likely is we're coming and underfunded. Not forget so much money we don't know to do with IT.

I think the fear a lot of people have is what if colleges and there, what if they're spending their days building things on ChatGPT and whatever the future of that looks like. And they are worried not that they haven't saved enough, but that they just don't need IT. And so it's good at least understand.

Yes, their taxes and penalties, you can roll IT over to a rough idea, but I think it's capped at like thirty five thousand dollars. If they do get a scholarship, I guess you can withdraw that amount. So that's interesting.

You still pay taxes, but you avoid penalties. So now I kind of shift IT like a typical investment.

yes. So I wouldn't been Better to do that in a five twenty nine.

No IT just takes some of the pain away.

I didn't episode on tax of energy accounts. I think we talked a bit about five twenty nine where i'm doing mind. The only other couple things all add on.

Five twenty nine is IT really varies depending on what state you're in, whether there are even more tax benefits in california, the federal tax benefit of letting your investments grow and not being subject to capital gains on the growth is kind of consistent. But some states give you benefits on donations to your five to our contributions. California doesn't.

So I think one is important to look at what your states rules are. And then two, you are not required to use your states five twenty nine. So that doesn't mean that if colorado has a tax benefit for state taxes, I can get that tax benefit using colorado s five twenty nine. But IT does mean that if I live in a state where the investment options are bad and I don't like them, or the fees are high, I could use a nava or a utah or another states, five, nine in california. If I were in a state where there were great tax advantage.

I might not want to. I mean, twenty years ago, one five and were just coming out of the gate. They were quite expensive, especially in some states, and just was a worthy that made sense to forgo the state benefits in order to get to a lower cost option.

Now it's a much mature industry, and every state that i've run across has a low cost option or a region ably cost option. May I be the absolute lowest? But now we're talking now this one's forty basis points instead of twenty basis points.

Where is twenty years ago when I was first saving for my kids? IT was like this ones three and half percent and this ones one percent a while. That a is a huge difference and very substantial.

Now they are all small, relatively speaking. And yes, it's half is expensive. You can get to three basis points is at the six basis points, but it's not material. So compared to the cost and the state benefit. So you need to be careful.

There's lots of rows and there's lots of can when IT comes to five twenty nine and you really wanted understand what you're into and C, U, I, A, to A K K to an adviser or whatever you need to do so that this is not a recommendation for five twenty nine per say. But yes, there's lots of great things you can do with them. And I do spend a lot of time working with families saying, well, these are the state benefits and we probably should take a advantage of them and we should leverage a little bit.

Maybe we should make sure we could get to the maxim contribution limit and then stop. Or even if we go over the limit again, i'm doing a lot of late stage planning. So I will have situations where, okay, we've decided that we're gonna to them, more expensive school, so where one hundred thousand short and we need to deal with that in the next four years.

So very litter going to start putting two thousand a months away or three thousand a month away. And then it's like, well, watch five twenty nine or to be a five one and nine and like that. And IT becomes against optimization chAllenges.

There are five twenty nine limits. I believe right now it's eighteen thousand dollars you that's per kid giver so that you're .

talking about the gift tax rules where you're allowed to give. But education is an unlimited exception of the gift. okay.

And five twenty nine allow you to do some five year gifting as well. Yeah the super funding. And if you're a parent and you're paying for education for your own children, there's really no gifting. Go on on just paying a bill that you need to pay.

But if you wanted to contribute to a five twenty nine in those final years and you're one hundred thousand dollars, sure.

then the woman, a half million dollars or so, typically. So a typical five twenty nine company says, what does that cost? For one kid to go to the most expensive school, we can find that the limit.

So right now it's about five hundred thousand. Most five thousand and nine will accept. So again, the limits, generally the body up against this people don't have IT money.

And I have seen you talk a little about two things. One, where you put money may impact your eligibility for aid. And so if you were putting all of this money in a five, twenty nine, well, that could be more tax advantage for paying for college, would have an impact on your eligibility for aid over putting IT in your retirement account. How do you think about those kind of decisions, right?

That's why I enjoy working with late stage college planning because i'm working with no teenagers where we've going to get a few years ago. And it's really to the easy to look ahead and say, well, what will your income and your assets look like when you have a given college? Our Young people, I have a tough time, even the advice because it's like, well, your crew takes off in your income claims and now you're not gona qualify for need based date anyway just because of your income. So don't worry about worry, you put your money or maybe you're a teacher or or whatever reason your income as a little bit or and you will qualify and now you wish you wouldn't put as much money into the savings and south.

So how does that work? What accounts matter towards qualifying?

So need based date is based on in common assets of the parent and the student and income is taken from your taxes. So it's typically your agi. And then they add back in some on text income sometimes.

So there's a couple wrinkles in IT. So one of the worst things you can do is to set up an U T M A account or some other account in the students name. And we don't see IT is often, but I sometimes grammer and grandpa still do this where they're going to set up an account, put the kid's name in IT.

Well, now it's a students and they says student essays more heavily than parent assets. So we want to avoid that of the parents earn a half million a year, there are not to to go I for a most likely anyway, no matter where they have assets or what's going on. So doesn't matter where you save IT.

From a financial aid standpoint, certainly you're under one hundred thousand, you will qualify. And if you're under three hundred thousand, you might qualify at the right schools. And as the other chAllenges, we don't have a hard cut off. It's a slippery slope. Similar attacks right as your income climes, you get less aid, but there's never automatic zero IT just gets worse and worse and eventually you're not going to qualify.

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And I assume someone who's been a high earner for their entire life, if they are like all my kids are about to go to college now might be a good time to take a svd al and not earn anything for a year. Is that a viable way to alter your income for these things? Are how far back or they look in? And how much do your assets count verses your input.

So let's talk a bit more of what he has IT. Because your assets come against you, but they give you a pass and a lot of asset. So typically, your retirement doesn't count anything that's a pension profiteering foreign case iron is all that stuff is not counted against you for the federal method.

The faster your primary residence doesn't count. So your home, your home equity, your big mortgage, all that stuff just doesn't show up. So what does show up? Well, anything that's not retirement.

So your savings, mutual funds, exotic investment, crypt to something like that, those are all assets. After report, those stack options at work that are not tied into a natural retirement plan would count real estate. That's not your primary residence.

So if you have vacation land or property, you have business property, farms of those things would count. And then the other big one is college savings. So your five, twenty and ines would count in those types of things.

What about if you owned a business, but it's a private business like a dental practice.

there is a big change on the fast. If he was under one hundred employees, businesses were out in the past, they are now in, which is a big change. But i've seen families, you have a million and assets and still qualify. Two million of your income is lower, but it's a combination of income and assets.

okay? And there's no hard rule right there, not a document that is if you have over one point, three, five million dollars are .

going to qualify. No, exactly. So the way that works as they take your income, your A G I and say that's two hundred thousand, and then they take your assets and they multiply by a factor and then they added your income OK.

So there are just of assuming your .

assets earn a certain among exactly so doll, an additional hundred and twenty thousand of income. So now year two hundred thousand of income goes to three twenty, which reduces the amount of age eligible and that blood of schools that might disqualify you. So that million dollars may hurt you.

Now you mention the beatle IT only works for one year. Unfortunately, it's a year by year thing for financially. As an example, we have a senior right now that's going to graduate in twenty and twenty five. You fill off really right now nine months ahead of time, and you're use twenty, twenty three to access. You are going to do all over again next year, the next year, the next year, using twenty three, twenty four, twenty five and twenty six for that same student.

So you need a long sb ticket or not times there's some dramatic changes that families go through as well, right? A divorce, a death, a sudden unemployment or tough times in the family business or something about where you take advantage IT where you can. And sometimes at last mortal years, sometimes it's a one year lip. And then even with planning, you might say i'm in an alternate years, kind like you do for some tax strategies.

This is the year i'm going to have a good income and this is the year I want to to try and minimize IT and then play some of those games, start looking at this freshman soft more year because I run into a lot of parents of seniors that say, really what's going be based on last year taxes. Well, I can change last year to taxes exactly. Now if you have a soft or freshman.

Now we're talking about a twenty twenty seven graduate that's going use twenty twenty five taxes. And you can say all I actually can impact twenty, twenty five still. That's in the future.

That's why I think some families need to start early because there are some things that you want to pay attention to. There's a couple gas is like a self employ individual who puts money in the retirement may not get a benefit from that. He does bring your agi down so IT should help for aid, but they're going to add that back in if they can find IT on your ten forty.

Ah we were as if you put the money into retirement at work where IT just reduces your w two, then they can't find IT and then they can add back in. So a self employed plummer who was married to a teacher, probably should save in the teachers accounts, not plummer's accounts because IT won't show up and will bring your income down again. The big cavy out, of course, is if it's gonna matter, right? Bringing your income down from one hundred thousand and three fifty may not make a difference.

And when you got to fill out this forms you mentioned, retirement accounts don't count. That means they're not pulling the data yourself, submitting IT. So if you make a mistake of just listing your retirement account, are they going to say, oh, no, no, that doesn't count? Or do you have to remember that not put IT on the form?

You have to remember the other change that came as the first get quite a simper now. So there three questions, how much you have in the bank, what are your investments worth and what are your businesses and farms worth? And then there's a little info button where you can read a little bit more, but that's IT right. You add up all your investments and you put the investment bank, there's no way for them to anything play might audit in the future, but they're not gna say, oh no, looks like you put in your foo N, K. You made a mistake.

Nobody going to catch that for you and you glister three things, but you didn't mention debt. So if I an to alan, those account that doesn't count as a negative.

No, the only debt that would matter is the net value of your business. If you had business that or farm that, those would offset. And I guess we had dead unrealised state that you're listing as well.

that would offset. If I had some loans and I was thinking I wanted to lower my assets and I paid those loans off that change the situation?

absolutely. I always give this example. You fifty thousand dollars in the bank and you will build on your desk for sighting and windows. Well, you spend that thirty eight thousand before you fill out the fast and not after because obviously IT will bring down you. Yes, is that you list now .

if you have twenty million dollars in assets.

probably doesn't matter. correct? exactly. right. So knowing where that line is. And the other thing we can talk about is there's something else called the C S. S.

Profile, which is the additional forms that many of the elite colleges use. So harden yo and rice and note dame and about three or colleges, these colleagues can be very generous. Stanford just put out a press release that said, if your income is under one hundred thousand dollars, stanford will be free, zero tuition, zero overboard. If your incomes between one hundred and one fifty intuitional be zero and you still have to pay some or maybe all of roman board you .

didn't mention assets.

there doesn't matter. Now I think there is an abstract on that where you'd have to be within reason. So I don't know what they would consider within reason, meaning right, certainly the multi millionaire that have the accountants that can drive their income to whatever they they are.

If your income is the eight thousand and you happen to have one hundred thousand hours of investments, I don't think they are going to count those four hundred thousand against you. That's not unusual, right? K, A family that saved some money.

But there is an abstraction on that chart that I was looking at for the faster itself. There is also what we call the magic pal. And there are low numbers, typical families that they get their drinking below seventy five thousand.

They don't have to list their assets. I've been working with a few families that have inheritances, but relatively low income, and we don't have to list the inherited ance. If we can drive their income law.

you would have to list IT if they had higher in that.

I mean, you inherit grampus house and you inherit damp as bank accounts and cds, their assets, and you have to report them. And then if you sell the house, we want to report the house. But now you have a pilot. So same problem.

But similarly, if you saw the house and you know you're going to only R S A lot of money that year, but you haven't paid those taxes yet. You don't get to account your future tax bill. So pay those taxes for you the first? absolutely.

And you've got a little time. If you ve got a high school freshman, you can say, well, I can max out. This is some of the things IT used to be.

I killed in afford to put all thirty thousand dollars into my retirement, and my spouse put another thirty thousand into their retirement. And max, the H. R.

A. And do roth, I R S. I mean, who has that kind of cash flow? Well, you just inhered three hundred thousand dollars. You don't need the cash more. You've got the money to get IT done.

And a lot of times that's what do you could accelerate doing that type of thing and of course, helps you manage your age as well, which now that makes IT more likely that you can qualify. My income is one hundred and ten thousand. My targeted to seventy five thousand.

Well, if we each put thirty thousand in the retirement that's sixty thousand off that will bring us down and we'll have a shot at yeah. But if I put all my money in retirement, what do I live on? Well, you live on your inheritance, which has the added benefit of, no, not those assets go away.

Your retirement grows dramatically. Your other asset shrink dramatically, which is good for financial ID. And your income is low, which is good for financial ID.

could you just replace inheritance ants with savings?

In this case, any pile of money would work, right? So if you just happened to half a half million dollars in the bank, for whatever reason, whether it's inherit or whatever, and you want to make that shift, perhaps you could or hundred thousand and doesn't have to be big numbers, that could be smaller.

So if you are in the financial independence, retire early and you've saved up enough money to retire before your kids go to college, you can drive your income to fifty thousand dollars. You'd be in a pretty good space, professor. There are schools that can ask for other information. So that doesn't mean your good for every school.

Exactly C S S. profile. We mentioned earlier that additional information that the colleges want because they're so generous, right?

You're going to give out forty thousand, fifty thousand ninety dollars scholarships. We want to have more information than what the fast provides. So they used the C.

S S profile. Asus, like thirty two questions. Now, C S.

S profile is like three hundred questions. I mean, I get every detail. What do you have in every account?

An example someone gave me was that they might ask, what kind of car you drive? And maybe this was for a private school. I'm not sure they're looking for people who can't afford college. If you say, gosh, H I don't have any income this year, but we drive two for aries there, like I know about that, right? So that they can look at a lot more .

things and they will also ask for copies of your taxes, though ask for copies of your business taxes. Again, just did a little leaper because harder in in some of high schools. They've got a lot of customers, so to speak, who have a the hypocrites count that can make their taxes say whatever they want. They don't want those people gaming the system. One, in fact, their goal is to help people that really needed .

yeah and I don't think most of the people listening here sitting with hundreds of millions of dollars and have super high power accounts and don't have to work and can play this, so let's die back and so on, the need based aid. You can feel like these forms, but I think some people might think there's financial aid at the university, but that's not the only source of financial aid.

right? 好。 Cialis, broad and IT would include work and loans and brands and scholarships. Big sources would be the colleges themselves, but also the federal government. Federal government has telegram, certainly lots of student loans, and that can be doled out either merit based or need based. So figuring out what does my student qualifier married, I think there is a chAllenge, right?

You take a rockstar student that I can get in a nota day, would say, but just barely know, just barely getting into nota day, you're still a really strong student. Now that student can go to some local university and maybe get the tap scholarship, can get a thirty thousand dollar merit scholarship. And they also might be able to go to another university where there the presidential scholar that gets the full ride.

Now there's lot of parents also that say, well, my kid works so hard, he deserves note, dame, and we're just gonna ite big checks and pay for IT fine family. That's the goal. Again, you also have the option going to different colleges and getting thirty thousand office, seventy thousand thousand or school.

Now you're net forty instead of note day at eighty board, let's say. And then there's a school over here that will cover all of tuition and you just pay roman board or maybe you've cover room and board and you can go for free. Now that school is that world around.

Like note dame, most people never heard of IT, but of the Price is right again. A lot of times of saying kids go on to be doctors and lawyers was just an undergrad degree, spending a lot of money automatically. The Better path as much as the colleges would like you to believe. And all the private school industry, same with private high schools, right? I mean, they are selling stuff as well.

I went to a public state school and the university, like I got a good education. I turned out, okay, I didn't have that. I really education. And we save a lot doing that.

yes. But on the flip side, if do you think your kids on the way to be present in the united states and you have the option of setting up the, you probably should if look at where your presence tend to come from. IT is the I.

V. league. So you need those connections. So there are benefits to IT. Without a doubt, whether the benefits are worth IT for your situation is the bigger question.

So with all the needs based a, we going to talk about some of the forms on the merit aid. Is income a factor at all?

Generally not. Now there are some programs or it's both, right? So bill gates ran a program where they were paying a lot of money and helping with fantastic of percent scholarships.

But to qualify, you have to be academic strong and had to be pillow grant eligible, which meant your family income had to be below seventy thousand or something. So we had to be high, need low income and be an academic rockstar to win those scholarships. And they were full rides. So IT was worth that. If you could manage IT.

I know there are lots of different scholarship programs outside of schools. How does someone even begin put together a plan for finding scholarships and marriage?

You go to taming the high cost of college that come slash scholarships. I have the scholarship guide for busy parents and four videos that are each about ten, twelve, fifteen minutes. The goal of IT is so you can learn enough to know about what types of scholarships are our right fit for you.

I had a family fill out forty one scholarship applications. They won seven for thirty nine thousand hours. But there are the exception. They're not the rule.

And if you're gonna work that hard at and you need to know what you're getting into and that's the reality, right, is famous that should work out harder because they could be successful at the time because they don't start early enough and therefore, they don't do the forty applications. They do six or five or zero. And then other times, students are busy, parents are busy. Somebody has to do all the hard work for scholarships, and IT could be worthy.

I met this woman who is speaking at a conference called vinta, and he had applied for so many grants and scholarships. IT was more than the cost of attendance. And some of these grants that he was eligible for paid her, in addition to the cost of in borch acid, six figures in grants and scholarships after paying everything off. If you'd asked me if that was possible, I would have said no. And SHE was on her way to a million dollars before he graduated from qualified for so many different grants and scholarships.

And again, that would be very much the exception and not the rule.

But if your kids very academically strong, putting in the extra effort to kind of find all these things. And one thing I don't think mention that guide you've put together with four videos IT doesn't cost anything.

That's great. Three video series you can catch you on youtube. You can watch the videos for free. I don't even ask for .

we will put the link in the show notes, but it's probably worth going through that process if your kid is really .

strong academic no matter what, because there are scholarships for the sea student that the point i'm trying to make, right, there's a place for everyone, seventy percent of graduate start college in some form and that's down maybe to sixty six or anything. It's slip a little bit, but two thirds of the population coming at a high school goes under some sort of college that just a four year degree is a two year degree.

It's all of the different programs. And all of that is appropriate because that all of requires need based ed financial ID. So all part of the federal system can all be plan for.

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supporting those who support us. One strategy, i've heard from some parents, if you want to save on college, but you really want that great degree, can you go to a local community college for two years, get the it's in some of the basic classes and transfer into a more competitive, academically strong, higher reputation college for the last two years? What do you think about that strategy?

I think it's a great strategy, but you need to do your homework and it's becoming a lot easier now. Many states have had Mandates now where they set up piles or you can go to community colleges or even just some of the outlying colleges and then transfer to the flagship school to finish degree. And if you are sure your credit or are going to transfer and you understand both schools really well and it's all put together, that could be great. But I have had situations where OK well get sixty credits and I transferred and they expect thirty. So I lost a year anyway.

which could hurt into your saving. And and probably I don't know the answer to this, but i'm guessing it's not as effective of a strategy if the goal is to save money on an iv league school versus a tear one state school, correct.

be ready to be hard to transfer into some of these schools. And again, if you ve got a kid that strong, the I, the high end are going to be so generous that there gona be the local cost option. There are going to be cheaper than the local community college.

They're going to be free, rather be in one hundred thousand. They're free. There is the local cost option. The chance just get be an crack article accepted. I think a lot of people need to understand that there is wide variability in pricing is like an airline seat. You don't really know what the person is next.

You paid, you know, they could, to use their frequent file system, or gotten the right credit cards and played the game and paid nothing for the whole family. Way to go on vacation. And then someone at next to him is like, what I need to be in boston tomorrow. And they put their dinners club on the counter and they didn't know what I cost the four thousand dollars at the counter to leave immediately.

So sounds like especially if you're at the low income, there's a lot of options for savings for anyone on the higher income. I don't want to time focused on them because they can afford this, but it's still a massive cost, right? For someone who doesn't qualify for need based date, how should they be thinking about this public?

Have people I work with don't qualify for need based date, percy, but they still send their kids to college sometimes, you know, the colleges you're looking at will ultimately be fully Price. And you have to decide, well, i'm gonna write a check for ninety, or am I going to pursue other schools? Or maybe you get some marriages or your local state school might only be thirty and kind of finding that baLance.

But there's still a lot you can do, right? There's tax planning, there's saving investing, there's merage, there's negotiating with the schools, a lot of planning, just realizing that need based date is not on the list. And that's where I think a lot of people get little confused, is a lot more to than will I qualify for need base date or because even if don't, you're still going and going to be expensive.

So how we going to raise those kind of funds and the higher incomes is a lot more tax planning, is a lot more negotiating with ols. That's understanding the CS s profile. I had a dead earning for hundred four fifty at two kids and college, and he got me based date. Now that went from ninety thousand per student to roughly seventy thousand per student. But we consider that I when forty thousand years.

okay, you talk a little about tax savings. What should people be thinking about when IT comes to taxes to optimize the cost of college?

I mean, we covered the big one, which is the five, twenty and nine in the various savings. So that's big one. But on top of that, there is the opportunity credit that faces up between one sixty and one eighty if you're married and eighty and ninety of single I work with families worth like, okay, how do we stay under one sixty so we can take up energy? That's credit.

How much can that credit me? Up to twenty five hundred per year per student? Yes, up to four years.

So it's roughly ten thousand per student. So again, a lot of times it's all I chose to put this money in the raw version network. I to put IT in the deductable version. I have got a credit. So maybe I should do that.

Or if I put money in the H S. A, when there's these hard requirements, it's really darling in the levers. If you're making a hundred thousand, thousand years, doesn't ter, but if you're making somewhere between one fifty and one eighty, depending on how you contribute, this is the year to pay .

attention exactly. If you're a business owner, if you have inherit, if you're divorced, there's a lot more levers to pull, a lot more things you can do, like business owners hire in the kids in the business and paying them a wage, making them independent again. If you lose the benefits for claiming your own student, then stop claiming them and having claim themselves and then figure how to transfer income to them, hire them in the business. So if you're incomes six hundred thousand and nap or roughly here know, and someone in that igher hood obvious that you start losing all the benefits of having children and and their deductions in that, let's say you're Operating a restaurant and your kids show up and workshift ts pay them well and make them independent versus saying, well, that's what you have to do because i'm paying for your college so you have to show at the restaurant and work for free no do with the other way around. Pay them well, have them pay for college because when they pay taxes, they'll pay less than they'll .

be eligible for these credits also and they'll .

be eligible for the credits. So we'll have a tax bill, they'll be a lower rates. We'll have some taxes and i'll be able to use the credit where as mom and dad can use the credit, they didn't won't get any benefit for claiming.

So again, it's a lot of accountants that kind of understand this and can help you with IT. Sometimes you get ta bleed into the water before they really jump in with you. I think of big ones probably if you hear things like roth, I R S and I R S, there's a lot of planning .

there that could be done. You know, the end of the day, you've a one over hundred episodes on this topic of articles of everything. I think my goal today is to at least touch on things.

And someone listening to this is like all I am a restaurant owner. You're glad to go a little deeper if you're got I my kid is that academic cross? Or you can have to go little deeper.

So i'll link to a bunch of those things in the show notes. But by no means is this meant to be the most comprehensive guide because we just couldn't do IT in the time. We especially given how much i've seen you've created on this.

our website, the cost of college is by income that will help you understand the true net cost of college. That's a great resource. We've got financial calculator where you can work that out. We offer a free email newsletter where we kind of remind you, oh, here's some new stuff.

One of the big chAllenges as a parent and myself included, college is important, but it's not the only thing going on and weeks go by oh yeah, we were just supposed to call the college and IT just doesn't get done. Starting early is another chAllenge, right? I D like to start in my soft, but I don't really know what to do or how to do.

IT scholarship guide for busy parents is a great place to start, start learning about need and married and understanding, because you can plan as a parent whether your student is ready or not. I see that a lot too. We can do any planning.

My king does not what they want to be when they grow up or not even sure if they're going to college. really. We haven't quite figured that out. You can start planning anyway. Maybe you can visit colleges yet because your students is not ready, but you can figure out the parent side of college planning.

Okay, we didn't talk about student loans. So how should people be thinking about student loans right now? And how would that change depending on whether it's out of necessity or not?

Student loans are just another two and two backs, and some people will take true student loans, and that was available through the federal government or through the credit unions or whatever. Other people will burrow money for college, but it'll IT as a home equity line of credit or margin loans are all the different ways where they can say, well, I can borrow money cheaper.

Why would I do that? And the answer is, well, maybe you would borrow cheaper some other way if you can. But there's a lot of families after that can borrow a cheaper because they don't have enough home equity or the party use IT or whatever might be. And then the federal student loans are decent, but they can be beaten in the private market if you have got strong credit in that type of thing.

And they're just a tool where for some families, the reality of IT is college with loans is Better than no college almost for sure, especially IT leads to a career that you need the college for, want to be account to a nurse, a teacher, and you need to use some loans to get there. Well, as climbing the society omy letter, that's do IT works. Typically, that's the first generation college students is how are gonna IT second generation? Mom, dad might be able to pay your help, but they're not good and they're not bad.

If the math works great, I had use them. Now the chAllenge, I think, is the student cannot borrow much in their own name. The typical eighteen year old come out of college, they can borrow w fifty five hundred for the freshman men, dad and barrel arrest.

So pick the expensive school as ninety thousand student, barrow fifty five hundred and bar eighty four thousand, and prefer at all with alone. I'm just saying you should. I'm saying you could.

People who graduate with hundreds of thousands of colors of student debt is that often that their parents were the ones that kind of cosign on these loans? I have lots of friends who are still paying off student loans. Are those loans all technically their parents but their taking that responsibility? Or how do they end up in that situation?

So parents either cosign or grad school, once you we have your undergrad, you go on for masters or doctor, lawyer, all that stuff. Ts of people can borrow a lots of money there. Once you go on to the advances degree, the game completely changes.

And most aid is just long and it's also quite expensive down. So the typical doctors and lawyers out there could bar hundreds of thousands in order to get through the process. They don't also have to, but a lot of end up needing to.

Or again, my day, I cosign in the private market where primary barrel is the student mama ad cosign. And I think that's where, again, I work with parents and parents need to be the adult and say, I know i'm not willing to go sign this. Much of that we have to find a Better path. And I think with the biggest frustration that I see out there is when mom and dad have strong income and strongly assets, disqualifying the student from most aid, but then their philosophy is, weren't not paying for college because I were tired and therefore you were card and you figured out I don't believe in college, or I paid for my own college by borrowing or whatever, and then that student is just kind of stuck unless the parent is willing to sign or cosign.

I never really thought about about the perspective appearance that if you didn't have a lot of money and you aren't willing to pay for your kids college, you might have been a lot cheaper for them. great. Is there an argument for people who can and are planning on pain for their students to college to still take out loans?

yes. I mean, why is use of that in any financial plan makes sense and abuse doesn't write?

This is an area I don't have a lot of expertise, but you a mortgage, you might have to pay a high interest rate right now, but that interest is deductable on up to seven hundred fifty thousand dollars of mortgage. Are there any rules that make IT such that taking out alone could actually, despite the interest rate, the more attractive?

So there's two components. One is the math problem of IT. All right, I can borrow money and five percent.

I can give up this investment that's paying ten percent well baro at five and keep the investment that paying ten because I make more money than IT costs me. So if you can out earn your loans, then that's what leverage is all about. But you want to use leverage sparingly in some situations.

But there's also, I think, kind of the unit rule of skin in the game. And they had parents that could easily pay for whatever the kids want, and they still have the kids take out the student alone because it's like they need some skin in the game. They need earned three thousand dollars in the summer in order to pay for their spending money.

If they want to go out for pizza or beer, whatever they had earn that money, because I like giving IT to. And then on top of that, we expect them to take out this fifty, five hundred doll alone that they can sign up for the interest strates pretty friendly. They don't have to make any payments till they graduate, and it's just their skin in the game.

The loans that are in the students name IT sounds like probably have Better terms than the loans in the parent.

If you show a need, they can be subsidized. So then the industry is zero. While you're in college, people often say, why would I take a zero percent long? It's like you would you paid off later? If you you exception, that would be if you get yourself and over your head and start defaulting on that yo faver.

we won't go deep on this at all. But I know there are also some loan forgiveness programs depending on what of careers you go in. There are some employers that help with loan repayment assistance. And so you obviously have no idea what your child's is going to do after college to be able to plan that way. If going into college your child was like, so sad on becoming a public school teacher, there might be a world where some amount student loans would actually have been the lowest cost in the long run.

right? That's correct. The long forgiveness programs know if you graduate, go to work for a nonprofit or if you go to work in an industry that teachers or firefighters, there's various professionals now that there are trying to subsidize because they need more of them.

And some states will do different things. Some states are doing engineering now as an example of trying to get more engineers in their state. So you take a band of those programs where you can.

But I often caution people, there's some pretty unhappy families out there like, well, should I be taking these lungs just so we can get them forgiven? IT doesn't seem fair. My general answer is no. IT could happen, but it's not a plan and this kind of a hope.

I would never recommend anyone do something in the hopes that our government will do something in the future because we're recording this before the twenty twenty four election and I would not put any confidence on what will happen. I have no clue and and this is not a political statement.

It's just I would not want to make a financial decision in my life that was contingent on some future act of congress or presidential veto like something like that. So totally with you there. But I just I want to point out there are some student long forgiveness strategies that certain career paths to make IT more sense than absolutely.

right? So if you need the one anyway, well, then by all means, go ahead and take alone. But you need to be able to see a path that works. If IT works out and forgiven, life is good.

If IT works out and it's not forgiven, you still got to be able to survive and have a decent income and you can't be so far underwater that all hope is lost. And we hear about some of those reading graduates out there that are so far in the whole that they can't figure out how to earn enough to live. So you don't want to put yourself in that situation going in if you avoided that.

I have a couple of fun things i'll share i'm going to do. And after we stop recording with you, brad, just because I know you're short on time and I want to maxime, the time we have with you. So first, if there's any important point we missed, would love to hear IT. And then I have one last question before we read .

recovered R A lot. I can't recall anything in particular, but I think the bottle line is just do IT. I mean, college planning and financial planning, they kind of go together as well.

I think college for a lot of families as kind of that first. Okay, these big expenses that are coming, we really need to sharpen the pencil on figure this out. Is this going to impact our own retirement? Is IT reasonable to spend twenty thousand or fifty thousand or seventy five thousand a year for student?

Some of those big picture things need to be worked out in. Some reasonable guidelines need to be determined early on because we wait till the end, parents start to feel guilty they didn't plan well, whatever is, and they can always sign that big loan at the end and make IT all come together. So but I think where a lot of the problems come in as well is where all over the end, my student applied to very expensive schools and god accepted.

Now I feel guilty about saying no. So I guess I never sign up for the law. We didn't plan .

well some of these things. We didn't talk about deadlines, but the deadlines for merit needed they might be before the deadline for applying, they might be at different times of the year. So not only planned ahead, but one of those planning ahead things should be to look at the dates because they might be earlier than you think.

okay. So my parting question and then I want to ask where people can go deeper, is how much do you think the average, so not ultra high net worth, but not below that kind of hundred k threshold, where the water might be a hundred percent the average person. Is this something where if you plan well, you could save three percent on the cost of colleges at like twenty thirty percent.

So I think the average family could save you know, ten to thirty percent if they planned well, and some substantially more off the cost of their college. Certainly the stronger academic families can save tons of money. One option may come in dramatically different than another, and they just need to be aware that the option existed.

All right, now, obviously didn't hit everything. Where can people go deeper on all this?

Everything but I have is that time in the high cost of college. Dg cop, we've got our bad gas, a newsletter, scholarship guide for busy parents, financial calculator a and there's actually a phone number there. And if you call during business hours.

role answer has been awesome bread. When I was prepping for this, I read a lot of the content on your site. I listen to a lot of podcast is really fantastic.

I'm still in that early stage of planning with kids under five. But i'm marty starting to think about what I should be doing. And I have no doubt that in like ten years, I to be summer, a lot of that content. So thank you so much for thanks.

You're having me like I said, I want to share a strategy have been using on five twenty nine contributions that I think so amazing that actually pushed back be interview with brad because I wanted to be able to take advantage of IT and I didn't think I had enough time. That deal, unfortunately, is not around today, but there's an iteration of IT that is I did actually end up being able to send this to all the hacks members.

The morning that happened and a handful of them got to take advantage of IT. So in the future, when there's really timely deals that are like that, I do send them to members. All the have stock com slash join if you're interested. I'll talk about IT and what that was. I'll talk about how it's evolved and how you can still take advantage of IT today.

So I think the number one thing I hear from a lot of people is I wish that I could put my college savings or my college tuition payments on a credit or and a few people that listen to the show have reached out and said IT, actually their school or their children school does allow that, but the vast majority of schools don't. I'm not aware of any five, twenty nine years that let you contribute with a credit card. There are some schools that even if they don't let you contribute with a credit card, they'll let you contribute with a debit card.

And there are a couple of debit card programs out there that do earn points or some kind of cash back, but they're few and far between. So that is an option. And then there's a credit card that hasn't come out yet called the rise tuition card that i've shared in the newsletter in the past that similar to the bit card is gonna be like a card that allows you to earn points on tuition.

However, IT is capped at one hundred thousand dollars of tuition spend, which seems like a lot, but IT only earns one percent. So that means that at most you going extra thousand dollars back a year. And I don't think that's trivial.

But I just wanted point out that relative to a sign up bonus that could be even more than a thousand dollars, you might want to consider IT against opening up a new card each year that could be a higher re if you did two cards with three cards that be even higher. But just something to consider when thinking about new cards. The main deal that cause me to delay this interview and that i've been really focused on recently, I sent IT around gift of college gift cards.

So if someone is unfamiliar, you can buy these gift cards, and you can buy them online and grocery stores. And what they do is they make IT really easy for you to give them someone, and they can apply them to their five, twenty nine account without needing to know whether account is and what institution. So I have the five twenty nine for our kids at wealth front.

And if someone were to gift me a gift of college gift card, I could basically go online with demand and say, hey, send all of these funds over to my five twenty nine at wealth front for my kids. So makes IT really easy to gift around five, nine contributions. And you can buy these gift cards at convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores.

But the catch is that usually come with an activation fee that's about six dollars and ninety five cents when you buy them in a store. That means that if you're buying one hundred million gift card and you're paying a six ninety five activation fee, you're effectively pain at six point nine five percent fee on the card, which makes IT much less appealing. However, gift of college gift cards do come in denominations up to five hundred dollars.

So i'm looking at a list right now of where you can get them. And the few places that have that five hundred dollar level are brooker brothers, comberton in farms, but not in vermont, food max H. B.

Lucky and save mart. Now there are some other places like cbs, fleet farm stripes and walmart that have them at smaller denominations. But i'm going to focus first for a second on the fact you can get them in store at a six ninety five.

And if you were able to get a five hundred dollar value one, then if you're looking at six ninety five at a five hundred, you're only paying about one point three nine percent. So if you had a credit card that earned more than that, you'd have a little bit of margin there. And if that card earned four points per dollar at a grocery store, well, then that margins even bigger.

So that's been something that's interesting. But if you don't have one of these stores near you or they're not always in stock or you have to drive around, that can be a little bit of a hassle. But I noticed the morning of this interview that gift cards dot com was selling gift of college gift cards only at the two hundred dollar value, but they were selling IT without an activation fee, meaning you could buy five, two hundred dollar gift of college gift cards for a thousand dollars with no fee.

So right out the gate, that's interesting. But at the time, gift cards to com, which has their own rewards program, was giving two percent back in points that you can use on their site. And gift cards, stock com was on record with a two point five percent cash background.

So you could buy a thousand dollars of these gift cards. You'd get twenty dollars of rewards on gift cards that calm in the form of two thousand points. You'd also get twenty five dollars of cash back on racket, plus whatever points you got buying this on a credit card.

So in my mind, if you stack that up, you get two and half percent on cash back for reactant. You get two percent on gift guards stock com. And let's say you had the U.

S. Bank smart I card that has already come out. You could stack those up for eight and a half percent back on your five, nine contributions.

That's amazing. Even if you just had a two percent card, you'd be at six and a half percent off your college contributions. Now I told you I did.

I told x members. So I hope a lot of people listening got to take advantage of IT. But i'm not just going to talk about a deal that you can take advantage because that wouldn't be that interesting though.

IT is good to know what kinds of deals do pop up from time to time. And one thing that I forgot to mention on all of the cash back portal, les, there is usually a two thousand dollar cap on your spend on gift cards. Dcom, so when I was running this all morning, I was purchasing two thousand dollars, and then I was doing another transaction and another transaction and another transaction to keep that limit.

And I was just stacking up all the racket and rewards, which I actually have my record account linked to, my mx account, I was actually earning max points. So that was the play that happened. Then a few things changed to the negative.

And then one big thing, change to the positive. And I actually think the play might be even Better now, but it's just a little different. So what's change is that, unfortunately, you're no longer getting two percent in gift cards, doc, on rewards, which by the way, you do need to go into account on gift cards, saw com and opt in.

You're only getting one percent. So that's a bur. Also, they are now charging a five ninety five b four buying these gift cards. And unfortunately, the maximum gift card you can buy is only one hundred dollars.

So now you're stuck paying a five sixty five fee on one hundred dollars, which means you basically have a five point nine five percent 4。 They do give you one percent in gift guards that come rewards. So let's assume it's a four point nine five percent fee.

So let's just round IT and say it's a five percent fee to buy gift of college gift cards on gift cards that come now if you use the record in portal, you ve got two and a half percent back there. Now you've got to two and a half percent fee. And then if you were to use a card that earned two point six two five, like one of the bank of amErica cards of plane on S A Robin hood card at three percent, the U.

S. Bank card at four percent, yeah, you could probably make a little bit of a spread there. But the really interesting thing is too full. So one, as of recording this. And unfortunately, by the time this is done, I don't know if these deals will be here or if they'll be replaced with Better ones.

But a lot of the airline shopping portals have these big holiday bonuses that I imagine I could be wrong would come back again as we get close to the holidays where, for example, amErica said, if you spend sixteen hundred dollars, you'll get a bonus four thousand miles on top of on the day I did this, two and a half miles per dollar. So spent sixteen hundred dollars get two and half miles per dollar, or four thousand points get another four thousand bonus points. You end up with eight thousand american miles, where as on rack to a half percent would have only been worth forty dollars.

I value american miles at over. Wanted a half sense because they're really difficult to get. They're not transfer partners of anyone. So that's a way Better deal.

But let's say, even that's not available and you've still only got your two and half percent back on rocket IT still feels like I might not be a great deal. You pay a five percent fee. You get two and a half percent back on rack.

You need your credit card rewards to beat the two and a half percent, which is hard to do. Obviously, if you're in the middle of trying to hit a sign up bonus, IT would work. But otherwise that doesn't make a lot of sense.

So where I think IT gets interesting is the fact that right now there is a chase offer, and I have IT on ten different chase cards for five percent back. On gift cards, stock come up to fifty dollars, which means for each of those cards, you could spend a thousand dollars, get five percent back. And that wouldn't negate the entire gift of college fee because you're paying a five point nine five percent fee.

You're getting one percent back and give cards are come rewards, and you're getting five percent back on chase. So you end up with whatever those shopping portals are. So what's a racket into one hf percent plus whatever rewards you're getting on your card.

So that's a trick i've been using. I've been playing with this as IT comes and comes, I think it's still possible that in the near future, gift cards dot com will actually bring back the two hundred dollar gift of college gift cards. IT still says like fifty to two hundred dollars on the image on the site.

I'm hoping that comes back. These chase offers don't expire to the end of the year. So there's no rush unless, of course, there are some holiday shopping portal bonuses or elevated cash back for if is I definitely keep an eye for those.

If you haven't yet activated some of these offers for any offers, whether it's make amErica chase hama X, I highly recommend checking out the card pointers APP. You can get a discount of thirty percent at all the hacks stock consarc card pointers. And the reason why it's such a great APP and I mentioned this last week in the gift guid episode. Is that for all these card link to offers, when you add them through card pointless, they go and hit the bank website as at the exact same time, so you can add them to multiple cards.

So right now we have this gift cards to come offer on ten different cards, which means if each one can spend a thousand, we could go spend ten thousand dollars conceptual and get that extra fifty dollars back on all ten of those cards and gate the fee on all of them, and then any other credit card rewards and any of the shopping portal bonuses are a bonus. So hopefully really helpful. Wanted to share that quick hack before I signed off today.

Thank you so much for listening podcast at all the hacks to calm. If you have questions or you want to reach out, i'm going to read a quick disclosure that brad asked me to read because if I do, he's willing to share this episode and I wanted him to be able to do that. I will see you next week.

The information provided to you today is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be specific recommendations or advice. Please consult with a qualified professional before acting on any of this material. Investing dozen involve risk.

Depending on the type of investments, there may be varying degrees of risk. Investors should be prepared to bear loss, including total loss of principle on five twenty nine college savings plans. Investors should carefully consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. The information and other important information are contained in the fund prospectuses summary prospectuses in five twenty nine product programme description. These documents can be obtained from a financial professional or directly from the plans website.

Please read them carefully before investing, depending on your state of residents that there may be an instate plan that offers tax and other benefits, which may include financial AIDS, scholarship funds and protection from creditors before investing in any states five twenty nine plan, investors should consult a tax professional. If draws from five twenty nine plans are used for purposes other than qualified education, that withdrawal could be subject to a ten percent federal tax penalty, state penalties, federal income tax and state income tax. Finally, brad bolder age is a registered representative with cambridge investment research ink security are offered through campaign investment research ink, a broker dealer member fina S I P C braddle is also in investment advisor representative with cambridge invest research visors a registered or bolder ge wealth management and bolder ge college solutions are affiliated cambridge, and the borage companies are not affiliated. His registered branch location is two eight one zero south cohn road newberry in was concerned five three one, five one.