College Savings

Using 529 Plans for Estate Planning

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estate taxes 529 plans

Estate planning is one of those topics that seems to be widely misunderstood. First, there are different kinds of estate planning. The most necessary kind for everyone is simply having a will of some sort. It really doesn’t have to be anything fancy, especially if you don’t have a lot of assets. There are a lot of forms out there you can fill in. While that is definitely NOT the way to go if you have anything complicated or fancy, or if you have a lot of assets, they are pretty much fine for the average person. The second type of estate planning is financial estate planning, that is trying to avoid paying estate taxes. This actually applies only to a small percentage of people. Will I Have to Pay Estate Taxes? Nope. That was easy, huh? It’s a trick of semantics. Estate taxes are the only taxes that you will never have to pay. That’s because your heirs, or more specifically, your estate, actually pay estate taxes after you are dead, so you don’t pay them. Even if you inherit something, you don’t pay the taxes, the estate does, before the assets become yours, so technically, no person ever …

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ITT Tech Shuts Down

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ITT Technical Institutes is one of those colleges that you seem to see more on TV commercials than anywhere else. It announced that it is shutting down immediately, blaming the government. Unfortunately, the reality is that this was a long time coming. For years, many of the so-called, “for profit” colleges have been accused to providing their students little more than a big balance of student loans and degrees that weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. Somewhere along the line, enough powerful politicians switched from protecting these colleges to protecting their students, and the die was cast. As soon as ITT’s accrediting agency raised questions, the Feds acted. How ITT Shut Down Despite what you may read, the government did not shut down ITT. That would be an overstep over government power. Instead, it did the one thing it is allowed to do. It removed the eligibility of students to use federally backed student loans, which, are most student loans, at ITT schools. Lower income students make up a lot of the student body at schools like ITT Technical Institute. Without loans they wouldn’t be able to pay tuition, and without federal backing, they aren’t going to qualify …

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Saving Money Into 529 Plan

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OK, if you have already opened a 529 plan, and you have chosen which investments to use in your 529 plan, then the next step is to actually start getting money into your college savings account. And, it is here where the most important thing about saving money for college comes into play. The most important thing, more important than choosing the right college savings plan, more important than choosing which investments to use in your college savings plan, and more important that updating your higher education financial plan, is consistently automatically investing money in your college savings accounts. Let me go into a little more detail, it’s that important. We get caught up in the notion that what matters when saving or investing money are things like investment returns, taxes, using the right account, or getting the right financial advice. None of those things matters nearly as much as consistently investing more money. When I was a financial advisor some of the biggest 401k accounts, or 457 plans, I ever saw were from people who didn’t know a thing about them. These people opened the account when they were hired, set some sort of amount to contribute, picked an investment, or …

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Types of College Savings Accounts

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When it comes to saving money for college, there are a lot of options. A parents saving money for children’s college fund there are different ways to title those accounts, jointly or otherwise. Believe it or not, saving up money so your kid can go to college is a lot more about actually doing it, than how you do it. Most parents let a sizable amount of time pass in between college investments and that is a much bigger deal than exactly which kind of college savings account is right for you. Ways to Save Money for College Assuming you don’t want to stick money into a mattress, you are going to need some kind of bank account or other financial account to store up that money you need to save and invest. Here are the options. 529 College Savings Plans If the 529 plan came first, there wouldn’t be so many other ways to save for college. It is, quite simply, the best possible way to invest for college for most people. A 529 college account works a lot like a Roth IRA plan for college. You don’t get a federal income tax deduction for your contributions, but the …

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Saving Money for College The Basics

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Saving money for college has always been an important financial goal for many parents. It is only becoming more important as college tuition continues to skyrocket, and stories of people buried under huge student loan burdens become more common. Before we jump into the nuances of the many different ways to save for college, let’s start with the basics. How Much To Save For College I’ve talked before about how hard it is to make a financial plan for retirement because of how many variables there are. You don’t know when you will start retirement, you don’t know how long you will live once you do retire, and you don’t really know how much money you will spend each year during retirement. Add it all up, and any retirement plan is a lot of guesswork.Fortunately, making a financial plan for education comes with a little more certainty to work with. For starters, you have a pretty good idea of when your children will start college. Take the grade they are in now, and count until you get to their senior year. The next year, is the first year of college. Granted, there are always exceptions, and your child may take …

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Complete Definitive Guide to 529 Plans

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For some reason, I thought I had written about 529 plans to death. After all, figuring out a way to pay for a child’s college education is a top priority for many people, and something I worked on a lot when I was a financial planner. More than that, I’m also a dad with a couple of rug rats that I’ll want to send off to get a great education, and then on to a wonderful life in the real world unencumbered by the all too common, crushing student loan debt. So, naturally, I think a lot about how education planning and college savings fit into a person’s personal financial plan. And, usually when something money related stays on my mind, I write about it a lot. Then, a family member shot me a message asking a question about paying for college for her growing sons. I figured I’d send her a dozen links to all my best college saving advice and 529 plan information. Only, it turns out, I haven’t covered near as much over the years as I thought I had. So, starting Wednesday, I’ll be cranking out the Complete Definitive Guide to 529 Plans and College Savings …

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