- Alright, well, as she said, my name is Chelsea Wunnicke
and I am the Family Living Agent with UW-Extension
in Richland County.
And we do have a topic here called College Savings.
The topic is very important through UW-Extension
because we are looking at ways to help families save
for college as well as lots of other financial goals
that they might have.
We call the campaign "Small Savings Build Big Dreams
for Young Children" because we are especially trying
to target families with younger children.
Not necessarily waiting until your child is a junior
or senior in high school, but starting to get
that conversation started earlier.
So this workshop is for parents that might have kids
that are a little bit younger,
as well as grandparents or community members
who might have an interest in this
topic because maybe they work with some scholarships
or they're an educator, or things like that.
So, wherever you are at today
is a great place to start.
So, whether your child is maybe just starting, getting some
independent, starting school, and you're thinking,
well wow, these five, six years have actually gone by
pretty fast, so maybe the next time yours are gonna go by
fast too and graduation is gonna be here
sooner than we think, or maybe you've started doing some
savings already and you want to maximize your efforts.
You're not sure if where you've put your money
is the right place.
You're not sure if what you have is enough.
Just kind of trying to pick up a little speed on that.
Or, you might be like this family, where you've got
105 things going on at once and college savings
is way on the back burner, not something you've really
even touched yet, but you know that it's important
and at least a little information to get you started
in the right direction would be helpful.
So, why save for college?
We all have heard in the news about the student loan debt
crisis as it were.
A lot of people have student loans that they're still
paying off later into life,
About 70% of millennials do carry some student loans,
and the median amount about is about $30,000
so it can be significant.
We know that the cost of college has gone up.
What we're looking at right now, is in today's dollars
one year at a university in Wisconsin a public university,
costing between $18,000 and $24,000.
Now that includes more than just the tuition,
that includes fees, books and supplies, miscellaneous,
room and board, but it is a significant expense to start
planning for or thinking about while your child
is still younger.
Of course if your child is younger, then you do have more
time to be saving, so that's to your advantage,
but we also expect that the cost will continue to go up
over time, with inflation and just the cost of things.
So, in terms of, again, why to save for college.
Well, it's more than just knowing that it's expensive,
it's knowing that it might also be something worth pursuing.
Again in the news and such, I think there's been a popular
conversation around, you know, maybe is education not
as good of an investment as it used to be,
with all the student loans.
You know, are people looking for different ways
to get education?
And while that might be true in some areas,
there's still definitely a correlation between the
amount of education that you have and then looking at
less employment and also higher earnings in that area.
So, when we've surveyed parents across all income levels,
they do think that education for their child is important,
and they look at that
as one of their most important financial goals going forward.
Even more important than saving for their own home.
So parents do think education is important, and the research
on the economy does bear that out, that education is helpful
for helping people to succeed in their jobs and future life.
So, maybe if you do have a little bit older child,
that you're talking to about education, and their plans
for the future, you do want to kinda compare some options.
Junior Achievement is a website that has an app, and that
talks about what you can expect, in terms of a career
trajectory going forward.
So if they have something that they might be interested
in doing, you can plug it in there, and you can see,
what is the educational requirement for that,
what's the median salary for that type of job,
what's the projected growth or shrinkage in that type
of industry to help you make a better decision in terms of
you know, is this a good place to spend our money
for that investment in the education.
And this next slide shows you kind of,
when you plug all that information in,
how it calculates that for you and it kind of looks like
a return on investment type of thing,
and so this isn't to say necessarily
that if you are interested in a career that maybe has
a slower growth potential, or isn't necessarily a
high earning type of job, that you shouldn't go into that,
but it might help you make some better decisions in terms of
maybe then you do start at a two year campus,
get some of your general education done at a lower cost,
or maybe you decide to live at home for a year,
or you just kind of plan on knowing that the student loans
would take longer to pay off in that type of industry.
That kind of information can be helpful for students
to know what to expect.
So those are just a few of those types of things that are
worth checking out on the internet, as you're starting to
think about the cost of college
and how to put this picture together.
So, though it may be years away, if you do have a child
that's say still in elementary school, there is some very
compelling evidence that, starting to save for college
early, can help your child right now,
and we'll talk about that now.
So, compared to children who have no money in a college
savings account, those who have even a small amount,
so under $500,
see benefits of their academic achievement early on.
So they're more likely to actually attend college,
more likely to graduate college, and they actually do better
in high school.
And the theory behind this research is that they
have this kind of idea that someone believes in them,
that they have a plan after high school, that there's some
money there for them, and they're more likely to say,
live up to those expectations, and perform in that way.
So, even if you can only save a small amount, it's still
worth doing.
I feel like that's one of the myths around college savings
is that parents or family members might get overwhelmed
by these big numbers and say well, I'm not able to save
tens of thousands of dollars, so why even bother.
Maybe I'm just not even gonna save anything.
Well, here's some information to say it's worth saving
a little bit, even if it is only a little bit.
Maybe $500 won't go a long ways towards paying the tuition,
but it might help actually get the child
to college to begin with.
And we should say that when we talk about college,
we're not necessarily always talking about
the four year degree.
This is about any type of post-secondary education,
and when they look at jobs in the economy in the future,
not everything needs a four year degree, but most jobs are
requiring something, either a certificate program,
a two year degree, maybe it's technical school,
there's some sort of training you need to achieve these jobs
that are gonna be coming down the pipe in the new economy.
So when you're thinking about how much to set aside
or what do we need to save for college,
there are a lot of different variables
and we'll talk about those in a little bit more detail.
But you might think about the age of your child,
as well as the school they might be attending,
and you also look at some of the other factors
in your household, your income, your other financial
obligations, all of that can be part of the picture.
So, again when we were talking about the one year at a
Wisconsin four year university, we were kind of talking
about that age range of, or that price range of
$18,000 to $23,000 and this shows you a little bit of how
that's put together.
It isn't just the tuition, as I said, because that's kind of
what might be quoted but to think about the bigger picture
of the room and board being a pretty significant cost,
and then the transportation and miscellaneous cost
as well as books and supplies.
I do have on here the website that we use, through extension
where we've kind of compiled a lot of these different
calculators, and we have our fact sheet on there and such
like that, so if you're looking for a place to get started
with finding out about college savings, check out our FYI
site that's up here, and that can be a place to go and find
more information.
So, when you're looking on how to pay for college,
a combination strategy usually works best.
I talked about that first myth being that, you know,
if you can't save anything then I maybe won't do anything
at all, or if you can't save at all, then maybe I won't
save anything.
So, I think that a lot of people need to know that it is
a combination strategy, that you do want to save some money,
but you should also expect to have the rest of the cost of
college come from other sources as well.
So there probably will be some borrowing, either on
the parent side or the student side, or both,
as well as income coming directly from the years that you're
working while your child is in school,
and perhaps some income and savings on behalf of the child
as well.
And of course you can still look for those grants
and scholarships, those things to help cover the costs, with
someone else paying.
And so this next chart will show that a little bit more.
Kind of that combination approach.
This is some data that was compiled of 2015 families,
how they paid for college,
to give you an idea of kind of how that breakdown happens.
So as you can see the parent income and savings covers about
a third, and then the scholarships and grant covers
about a third.
So, together those things are covering the majority of
the costs of college, but then there is a significant
portion that is covered by borrowing, as well as the
student's own income and savings being part of that as well.
So just to kind of give you that idea that, you don't have
to think it's an all or nothing,
either it's gonna be all covered by scholarships or I'm
gonna have to pay it all, or it's all gonna be borrowed
on that in most cases, it is kind of this,
pieces of the puzzle that come together.
So I think this is one of the big myths,
I already talked to you about one of the myths,
but I'd say the other myth is that whole idea that well,
I shouldn't save money, I want to try to hide my money,
so that the government doesn't see my money and then
my school will get to go to school for free.
(chuckles)
And I think that that's something that we do have to address
because that can be another obstacle towards savings.
You know, that kind of idea.
And to me, when I looked at some of the calculators and
stuff like that, that does seem like a big myth,
that it's one of these kind of mythical creatures of the
free college that we might be holding out for,
but in the meantime, we're not doing the planning
that we need to do, to actually be able to afford college.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about more about
the calculators and things like that,
that you can take a look at,
to see where you fit into that picture.
So,
most students are receiving some type of
scholarship or grants,
but it's only covering about a third
of their college costs.
So the rest of that is coming from somewhere.
It's either coming from savings, that's been set aside
ahead of time, or it's coming from loans and borrowing.
And so when you think about it, when you set money aside in
savings, you might be earning interest on that,
but when you have to pay back loans, you're paying back
more than what you borrowed originally.
So anything that you can save that might prevent you from
having to take loans later, is giving you a bigger bang
for your buck with that.
So when you are going into college, most people are
familiar with the FAFSA, the Federal Application or the
Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
And so that's where you fill in all your information about
your income picture, your household information,
and that gets put into a calculation which is how they're
going to determine, what type of student aid you're eligible
for, as well as what is your expected family contribution,
that's the amount they expect you will put in out of pocket
before any aid or things like that kicks in.
And so I do have on here, and I'm gonna have these on
the slide again, some of those websites, where you can do
some of that testing, to see,
put in your information and kind of see what everything
comes up with.
We're gonna look at a couple different scenarios to help
show you, what might come out when you put things in there.
What we find is that a lot of times, the income is a bigger
factor that necessarily having
some money set aside in savings.
So, I think that's important to think about because
you can control how much you save, your income may not
fluctuate widely.
I'm gonna take questions at the end.
- [Audience Member] Okay.
- Okay,
So, if you take a look here, we've got a family of four
we're saying they're sending their first child to college
and they make $55,000 a year.
They do have some money in savings and their student has
some money in savings as well.
And so when those numbers get plugged in, what we estimate
for their family contribution, that comes out,
is they're gonna have to spend $3,326 on that first year
of college.
Now remember we're thinking that college is gonna cost
about $18,000, so they would
also be eligible for a Pell Grant, which is covering $2,300.
So the rest of that about $11,000 is going to be coming from
student aid in the form of loans.
And those might be subsidized loans or they might be
unsubsidized loans or a combination, and we can kind of
talk about the difference of those.
If they didn't want to take out the $11,000 in loans,
maybe they would use some more of their savings to help
cover that,
but that would be sort of what's expected of them,
in terms of the family contribution.
So, if we look at that same family size, for a family
putting their first child into college,
if they make $100,000 as opposed to $55,000 a year,
you can see that the expected family contribution does
jump quite significantly.
So, it is very responsive to the income.
You can see then in this case, they are expected to put in
$16,129, they are no longer eligible for those Pell Grants,
and so if they put in their $16,129, then what's left of the
about $2,000 or so to cover the balance, that would be
in the form of loans.
So if a student is taking out a loan and they're offered a
subsidized loan, what that means is that the interest,
at the time that they're in college, does not need to be
paid, it doesn't accrue during that time.
It can also be put into deferment or things like that.
The unsubsidized loans, the interest is accrued right
from the time that you start taking it out.
And if the parents borrow it, then the parents can only
get the unsubsidized type of loan.
So that's something to consider as well,
that if you do have that money in savings, it does prevent
you from having to take on that loan at that time.
And so, yeah, just to put those out there again,
because I do think I would strongly encourage you to
check some of those scenarios yourself, to see if you're
kind of concerned about it, you know if we do
save this money, is that gonna hurt our chances for getting
some need based aid, or things like that,
go ahead and check it out.
Put in some numbers,
see what you can find out,
see what seems practical to you,
and get a better idea of a more realistic picture of
how the FAFSA calculated things, before necessarily
just assuming that having money set aside is going to hurt
your chances for those things.
So just to kind of reiterate the different pieces to the
puzzle that we're gonna be putting together.
I mean if we can agree that college is important,
that it is gonna be necessary for jobs of the future,
and that it is worth setting aside some money to do that,
that the whole cost isn't necessarily gonna be covered by
somebody else, but having some savings for that is good,
and then we can kind of look at that combination approach.
Okay, savings is gonna be one piece of it, but if I can't
save the tens of thousands of dollars, then I want to make
sure I understand all the other pieces that are getting put
together for it.
So, a lot of people when they think about financial aid,
they think about grants first and foremost,
and those are need based and they do not need
to be paid back.
So by all means, if your student qualifies for any grants,
take advantage of them, that's a great first piece of the
puzzle to put in there.
But there are some other things that are probably gonna be
part of the picture as well.
Work study is also part of the Federal Student Aid package,
and what that is would be an on-campus job, usually for a
certain number of hours and the positive side of that is
that the money that the student earns from the work study,
doesn't count against them in the FAFSA, because
it's kinda part of their aid package.
And also it's a good thing because
there usually is a certain restricted number of hours
that they can get for work study.
So that kinda makes sure that they can fit
their school work in as well as the job
whereas an off-campus job can sometimes take away from
the school work and then if the student ends up
having to take longer to finish their degree,
sometimes they're not really that much further ahead
because they might have been working a low wage job
to help pay for school,
and then they put off their ability
to actually finish the degree
and get the job that they were hoping for at the end of it.
So the work study can be a good piece
of that picture to keep in mind as well.
Scholarships are usually offered by a private institution.
They might be offered through
the college or university as well.
They might be offered through a parent's employer
or a community group.
Again with scholarships, those don't need to be paid back,
so that's another great source of funds
but the student would need to spend time applying for those.
And then there's no guarantee when you apply
if you're gonna get that or not.
But here's another website, and this is also
on our FYI site as a link,
to go ahead and see if there's some scholarships
that your student might be interested in
and how to apply for those.
A good scholarship search engine there.
And then we also talked about loans,
the difference between subsidized and the unsubsidized
being kind of a significant difference,
and part of the reality for paying
for college in most cases.
I would say, don't be so afraid of student loans
that you want to be so restricted on your options,
but just know that if you can balance them out
with some of these other sources and keep them manageable
so that the repayment is affordable down the road,
that would be your most advantageous route.
And so again with the FAFSA that's going to be looking at
your eligibility for both grants, work study and loans
and then the scholarships would be something you would
apply for on the side as well.
So who needs to save?
We're kind of targeting this presentation like we said
at parents of younger children as well as grandparents
or others, but children can save money as well.
I think that's an important part of maybe having
conversation with your child even at a young age,
when we talk about the benefit of college savings,
two young children, they need to know that they have money
set aside just for college, that it's for them, and they
have to know about it.
So it can't be like a big secret that they don't know about.
It's part of that conversation so that they know and they're
living up to those expectations.
The effect is even greater if they're putting in some
of their own money into that.
So whether that's allowances or money they get for
birthdays or gifts.
If they know they have a college savings account, and that
they can put some of their own money into it, their
buying into that is even more.
And so, maybe have that conversation with them about
if you have a savings account, how much they can put into it
or making a plan with them of a certain amount per year
maybe they want to save for college,
even if it's just a small amount, it's kind of that token
effort that is beneficial.
With parents, we know that there are a lot of competing
financial needs, especially for limited means families.
You may be trying to pay off your mortgage,
you may be trying to save up for some emergencies,
you might have debt of your own including student loans
that you're trying to pay off,
as well as needing to fund your own retirement.
We look at this as something where college savings can be
one of the things you save for, it doesn't have to be the
only thing.
So I certainly would not recommend, defunding
your retirement to pay for your child's college.
You definitely want to pay for your retirement because
there aren't any scholarships or grants or loans to help
pay for your retirement when you're elderly.
I'm sorry, maybe in the future,
but as far as I know, there's not right now.
But for students, they can borrow that money for school
if they need to, and there's not a savings there.
But we definitely look at this as, even if you can only
do a small amount, do put a little bit towards that
college savings because of that powerful message that it
sends to children that education is important,
it's something we do prioritize, even though we have
these other priorities and we're kind of putting our money
where our mouth is at least a little bit.
So if you are then getting to this point where
you're agreeing that yes college is important, yes we're
gonna put some money towards it,
we know we can't save the whole thing but we're gonna have
this combination strategy.
So,
I do need to save a little bit, it's kind of like, well
then where does that savings come from?
How are we gonna make that work?
So we've got a few options here for you to kind of look at
or to think about it.
Even if you can only save a small amount, say two dollars
a day, if you can do that consistently for a long time,
it actually does add up,
and so as we're kind of thinking about your spending or
what you spend on now,
and is there something that you spend now,
that you treat your kids on that maybe they don't actually
appreciate that much, that money would be better spent for
their college down the road and they're not gonna
miss it now but they'll be really appreciative
of having that money for college later.
Or you could maybe think about a percentage that you might
want to do.
You have to kind of pick what works for you and not
necessarily feel pressured by what other people are doing.
You can say I want to save a certain percentage of my salary
or maybe I want to save a certain percentage of the child's
college cost.
Maybe I say, well I can pay for, ten percent of your college
but that's all I can pay for, that's what I'm saving for
so, that's what you should expect, that's what you're gonna
get and then you can kind of stick to that plan that,
that way you know.
So just kind of think about some of those options,
and we do have a sheet where you can write down
your own goal and how much you want to save
and such like that, and we will make that available on
our website as well.
So if you do kind of want to pick something or think
about it a little bit, then we'll give you the opportunity
to write that down and hold yourself accountable to that.
Because it is tax time and a lot of families do get tax
refund checks, we included this as a way to help pay for
college as well.
That can be a good way if you just feel like,
there is no extra two dollars a day, I'm sorry.
But if you do get that refund check and you do get a large
lump sum once a year, the question is, yeah,
what do you with that to best achieve your goals?
One thing that we look at in extension is maybe thinking
about breaking that refund check into thirds.
And looking at taking one third of that and putting that
towards a long term goal.
And so that might be your retirement savings, that might be
your college savings, something that's more than
five years out, that's a good ways out,
and taking that third and putting it there.
Then you might take the second third and use that for
something that's maybe a shorter term goal.
Maybe you know that you're going to need to buy a vehicle
in a next year or two, maybe you know that
you're gonna have to do some traveling this summer and
you need money for gas and hotels or things
like that, so taking a third of that and putting it towards
that shorter term goal.
And then taking the last third and giving yourself
permission to spend that and use it on something fun
that you want to do, that you get enjoyment out of,
and that, you know, really feels good to you.
So, not being so strict on it, that you feel guilty or
feel bad for spending part of it, but making a plan so
that you feel like, okay, I'm achieving some of my long
term goals, some of my short term and we're also getting
the opportunity to do something that we don't do every day
by getting this sort of influx of money.
So that's one way to kind of think about it,
if you are interested in using it.
If you are wanting to buy a savings bond, there is the
Form 888 that comes, you can file with your taxes,
to actually buy a U.S. savings bond with
all or part of your refund,
or you could look at having all or part of your refund
actually deposited into, say an investment account or
something that's not your regular checking account,
so that you don't even see that money,
it doesn't really come across your lap.
And then it's already set aside so that you don't really
worry about spending it,
but it's going right towards that goal.
So just a few things to think about there.
But yeah, if you're down to the point where you have found
that little extra pot of money, whether it's from a tax
refund or you know it's a certain amount out of every check,
then I think the next question is,
what do I do with it?
Again that's another area where kind of the
scope of the problem, can be overwhelming.
You can feel like I don't know how to deal with all these
different types of accounts, I'm afraid of putting it
somewhere bad, or, making a mistake with it, so I just
don't want to bother with this at all.
So we've broken it down into a few different options for you
and we do have these on the back of our facts sheet,
kind of outlined some of the pluses and minuses.
But I am going to go through those now as well.
The 529 Plan is kind of like a 401k,
but it's for education rather than retirement,
so,
I guess, yeah, the name maybe slips people up, 'cuz
it doesn't say anything about education or college in there
529 is just a number, but that's what it is.
Most states have a 529 Plan that's sort of endorsed by their
state and in Wisconsin we actually have two options.
We have Tomorrow's Scholar, which you would buy through an
investment advisor or through an investment company,
or we have Edvest, which is the one where you can,
as a consumer, go and buy it directly yourself.
With the Edvest, you would go to edvest.com and on that
site, you can either get their phone number to contact
them to create an account, or you can go through
their process online and create a login and create
an account right there and set up an amount to fund it
and get it all done right through them.
So, either way, if you put money into a 529 Plan,
that's sort of like a bucket, so it's sitting in there,
it's saying it's for education, but then you have to choose
what you want it to be invested in.
So you'd also then have options within the 529 Plan.
You have some that are say, less risky, but would also have
less potential for growth, and then you'd have others that
are more risky, but also could potentially grow more.
So, within the 529 Plan, you do have some options,
although there are other things that are even less riskier
more safe that we'll talk about a little bit later.
But just to kind of keep that in mind that it is an
investment account, so that you can have things like
mutual funds or stocks and bonds funds within a 529 Plan
if you're thinking that you want to have something that
gets more than just a regular interest rate,
like a savings account.
They also have age based funds within there,
so you can say, I'm saving for,
my son who's six years old, so this is his birth date,
and they would have a fund that's based on the year
he was born. And the way that would work would be, as he's
younger, the investments would be more potential for growth
but also more risky, so potentially you could lose some
of what you put in, and then as he gets older and the
anticipated date of when he was going to need that money
gets closer, they would sort of re-align the ratios there,
and make it more safer potentially
and also less growth.
So that's kind of the idea behind the age based funds
being sort of an easy option if you're kind of thinking
that you want to invest it in an investment type of account.
To know that you don't necessarily have to know a lot
about the different types of accounts if you choose to pick
one like that.
If you are a Wisconsin resident, up to $3,100 is deductible
on your Wisconsin income taxes.
So you do save some state income taxes by going through
a 529 Plan.
That is one benefit.
If there's somebody outside of Wisconsin that wants to put
money into the 529 Plan for your child, they certainly
can do that, they just wouldn't get that same income
tax benefit.
So something to keep in mind there.
As the owner of the account, say I open an account,
I own that account, I would designate who I'm saving for,
like a child, but that person doesn't own the account,
they don't have access to the money, I still own it.
Let's say that child decides not to go to college
or doesn't need the money for some reason,
and I want to then still use that for education,
I can transfer it to another family member with no--
no fees or penalties.
If I wanted to pull it out though and use it for
something that wasn't education,
then there are fees and penalties for doing that.
And that's why I think of it as kind of similar
to like a 401K that's for retirement,
it's still your money, you can get it if you really need to,
but, if you really are in crisis and you try to get it out,
you're gonna pay some fees and penalties on that.
But it can be used for a wide range of education expenses,
so whether your child goes to college in Wisconsin,
or outside of Wisconsin, whether they go to a private
or public university,
the funds that are in the 529 Plan can pay for that.
And they can pay for more than just the tuition as well.
They can go for other qualified expenses including the books
and some of the room and board and things like that.
So it is pretty flexible there, and it can also be used for
continuing education as an adult too, so maybe if your
child doesn't use it all right out of high school,
but they decide to go back to school, 10 years down the road
if they still have money in that Edvest account, it can
help them at that point.
And the accessibility to it is pretty low.
When you look at making automatic deposits, $15-$25 a month
being, you can be at that low of a threshold and still
get started with this.
So that's kind of nice, that you don't have to have
thousands of dollars save up ahead of time,
to open one of these.
But you can start very low and build on it as you go.
So as I mentioned, we've got these summarized
on the back of our facts sheet,
and I will go on with some of the others
and if we do have questions we can talk about those
at the end.
So the Coverdell Education Savings Account
was formally called an Educational IRA
and again an IRA is a retirement account
so it's sort of this mirror image being used for education.
There's just sort of a few things that sort of differentiate
the Coverdell from a 529 that I think
are important to highlight.
And one of those is that it can be used for education
expenses before college and university,
so say if you are planning on sending your child to
a private school anywhere from K-12,
you could use this money that's in the Coverdell to cover
that tuition before college.
But then the other key factor is, it does have to be used
before that person is aged 30, so it can't really carry on
and follow them throughout their continuing education
for a lifetime.
If the person doesn't use it by age 30,
then you can transfer it to another family member,
but that is an important consideration there.
A U.S. Savings Bond, we kind of mentioned that
with the tax return being an option,
A U.S. Savings Bond maybe it's something you've purchased
before or somebody has given you,
they've been around forever,
you can use them for anything, but there are a few benefits,
if you do choose to buy one and use it for education.
You can see that the minimums are pretty low,
to be able to purchase them and you can purchase either
electronically through treasurydirect.gov, or with that.
tax refund, but if you do use it for college expenses
then you do get some tax benefits with that.
So, another option to think about, if you do kind of want
your money for college, sort of locked down
somewhere where you can't really easily access it
and use it for something else.
But one of those other accounts isn't really the way
you want to go with either, the U.S. Savings Bond has
the benefit of being
pretty much a safe, rock solid investment and set aside
where you can't really touch it until comes due.
And then the last one we talk about, is just your regular
everyday savings account.
So if those other ones seem strange and foreign to you,
and too complicated, there is absolutely nothing wrong
with just going to your regular bank or credit union
where you feel comfortable doing your banking
and opening a savings account,
maybe it's a money market account,
maybe it's a CD or maybe it's just a
regular savings account,
and saying that's my college savings
and that's what I want to use.
There's some benefits to doing that in terms of
the flexibility of it.
In that case it's not locked down,
it's not locked down specifically for education,
it's not locked down for any certain period of time.
So if you feel like, well, we might need this money
for something else, we don't have another emergency fund
and if we need it, we need to be able to pull
the money out of there, then maybe having it in a
regular savings account is really beneficial to you.
You know you can think of that the other way too,
if you want it locked away so you can't touch it,
then maybe that's not your best option.
But it's easy, it's convenient, it's accessible and
it's a great way to get started, and if you say
that's our college savings fund and you tell your child
your college savings fund is located at such and such bank,
you're gonna get the same benefits in terms of
that academic performance with them
that you would of any of the other accounts.
So keep that in mind that you
don't have to do something complicated to get started,
you can go simple on it as well.
Again, it's sort of that
it's not an all or nothing thing it's
take a look at the different options,
see which ones sound good to you
because they're helpful in one way or the other.
I kinda have these two circled because I would say
as an example scenario would be,
maybe I do want to put some money in a regular savings account
and call that college savings
but I'm also gonna put a little bit in a 529 plan
where I know it's locked away and I can't touch it.
So I'm gonna do like a combination strategy there.
I'll put my bulk in just my regular savings account,
but I'm gonna put a little bit in the 529
because I feel like I want to have little bit
that I really can't touch.
So that's just one suggested scenario or example,
but what works for one person
might be totally different for somebody else.
Just give it some thought about your options
that are out there
and the best thing you can do is
just get started with something.
So that said, we try to encourage you
to follow up with a plan.
Things to consider;
who do you need to talk to next?
Maybe it's your spouse or someone else
who's gonna help you put this plan together.
Grandparents or somebody else who's offered
to help pay for college,
but you haven't really had a plan
to suggest how they could do that.
Maybe it's your child,
to talk to them about we're gonna start
saving for college and this is how we're gonna do it
and getting them involved
so that you get that maximum benefit for them.
Maybe it's a financial institution,
if you're looking at some of those options
and you want to go talk to them about
what types of savings accounts or
what types of education accounts
do you have available.
Kinda getting the ball rolling with someone like that.
What other information do you need,
do you want to do some of those calculators,
do you want to look up and see
how much does it cost to go to a few different colleges.
So you get a better idea of
how much and how it's gonna work.
And then how much do you want to start saving,
if you're looking at your tax return
or you're looking at a certain amount out of each check.
Picking an amount that's achievable to you, that's specific,
that's maybe a little bit aggressive
but not gonna put you in the hole for other things.
Getting that amount, that dollar amount
and how much you're gonna do it and when will you start.
There's always another tomorrow
so the sooner you can start is better.
Picking that specific day and saying
by this date I'm gonna have done that.
With that said, we do have an example here
and you can either just do this
on your regular slip of paper
or we did provide this for those who are here in person.
A college savings plan example where you would say,
by a certain date I will do such and such
and to remind me I'm going to do this.
I think that, if you just come here
and you listen to this information
and you let it wash over you.
And that's all that you do well,
I appreciate your attention but our real goal
is to get you to translate that into action.
You want to make the most use out of your time
that you've spend listening to this.
So, the best thing that you can do is then say,
okay based on that information,
now I'm going to do something
to make it most worth of your time.
If you have some ideas of who could remind you,
we did have some suggestions for you
that there are some websites or things
that will send you a reminder.
Or I put on there that I will remind you
if you sign up and say you want me to call you
or email you at a certain date.
I will do that and I'd be willing to guess that
most of the family living extension agents,
if you call them at their county office,
do that kind of thing as well
because we often do budget counseling
and such like that as well.
So think about in one month,
what you would have liked to have done,
and what type of follow-up or check-in
would be the most helpful for you.
And in closing, just remember that
the small savings, whatever you can put aside
do help build the big dreams of young children today.
It's all about funding their education
and what they're looking to do tomorrow.
Thank you very much.
(applause)