All About Education at the Washington Post.

Sunday's Business section had three separate articles regarding educational finance. While I didn't see anything particularly revelatory, they do make a solid introduction to the issues surrounding paying for a child's education.

Forget Yale--Go State serves up the usual advice to:

• start saving in 529s when the children are young,
• spend time figuring out exactly how much of the school bill the parents are willing to pay a few years before the children visit and apply to schools, and
• remember to take advantage of all applicable tax credits when the children start attending college.

There is a very nice sidebar of Internet resources including the usual suspects (FAFSA, Finaid, Fastweb, and Savingforcollege) along with less well-known resources (NCES school profiles, College Board).

The article does mention that a student may get sufficient aid to cover the difference between a "high sticker-price" school and an ostensibly more affordable one, but it's somewhat glossed over. They do emphasize that the time to fill out the FAFSA is NOW.


Financial Futures--Save for You, Too means pretty much exactly what it says. Parents shouldn't save for college at the expense of their own retirement savings.

The article makes the point that lower-income families might not have as many costs to cover, because aid packages for lower income students may include grants. However, as Pell Grants have declined per recipient, this may be overly optimistic.

The larger point, however, stands. Families can't borrow for retirement.

Beware the Scholarship Hucksters reminds us that aid resources on the Internet are free, so there is no reason to pay for scholarships in any way. This includes scholarship searches, "recipient fees," or anything else. I wish this were simply common knowledge by now, but I guess not.