So Grandma wants to help pay for college? Fantastic! Tapping into extended family resources can certainly help parents overwhelmed by college costs. And since tuition payments are exempt from the gift tax, a grandparent’s help seems to be an effective way to disseminate family wealth without negative tax implications.
Tags: How to Pay for College
When I began refusing to eat meat in high school, I drove my mother crazy. All of a sudden, she had to cook two separate family dinners each night: one for the carnivores in the house and one for me. (Shame on me – while I had embraced eating vegetarian food, I had not yet mastered cooking it myself. I guess I owe her one.)
Tags: Finding Scholarships
Over the years, I’ve spoken with many college students and graduates whose greatest wish is a magic wand to make their student loans disappear. While magic wands are a rare commodity in college finance, there does exist a tool for making your loans vanish into thin air. It is called Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Tags: College Loan Advice
John was an excellent student. He studied hard in high school, was an involved student leader, aced his standardized tests, and come fall of his senior year, all of his diligence paid off: He was accepted Early Decision to a selective East Coast private college. This college also happened to be the school of his dreams.
With college costs at an all-time high, it is no wonder that parents are looking for ways to increase their financial aid eligibility. There is a lot of advice flying around the rumor mill about ways to get more financial aid—some of it true, a lot of it false, and much based in kernels of truth. Among these questionable pieces of advice is the common refrain that you ought to pay off your house in order to get more financial aid.
While bankruptcy is never one’s life goals, the fact is it happens. Job loss, medical expenses, divorce, and life’s other financial twists and turns can lead folks who never imagined doing so to file for bankruptcy protection. Bankruptcy filings have been steadily on the rise over the past century, especially since the 1980s, with close to a million consumers seeking bankruptcy protection in 2014. With the massive financial investment that comes with college, it is no surprise that as a college finance educator, I often get questions from parents and students about bankruptcy’s effect on college financial aid. Here are the 3 most common questions I receive about bankruptcy and financial aid:
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