Affording College, again

No debt.  That's our goal.  To have our kids graduate with no overhanging student loan debt.  We've done our best. The first one is out, with no debt, and will be starting graduate school on a fellowship next month.

The middle one will be a Junior this fall, and the youngest one will be entering school in September.

Here's what we've done to minimize college expenses:

1) Taken AP classes.  The oldest two children graduated from high school with enough AP credits that they were Sophomores by credit upon entering college.

2) Concurrent Enrollment- daughter has taken AP classes as well as concurrent enrollment.  She has 12 credits of college credit from the community college, and 12 credits of AP credit.  That's 24 hours of college credit that she'll be starting with.

3) The Maryland Pre-Paid College Trust.  This savings vehicle locks in your tuition prices down the line at today's price.  We invested in this when the kids were young.  This pays the tuition and fees for the flagship university for the state of Maryland.  This has worked well for the boys who both went in-state.  It left us with only a small amount of money to pay out of pocket.  For daughter who will be going out of state, they will pay the amount of the mandatory tuition and fees for the flagship university for the state of Maryland.  We'll still have a difference to pay, more than what we paid for the boys, but not the full amount.

4) Work.  All 3 of our kids work part time jobs.  Not only do they pay for their own "fun" expenses, they also pay for their own books.  Oldest child was able to pull together enough money to pay for the difference between his scholarships and the total amount due for the last two years of college.

5) Scholarships.  Apply for them.  All of them.  Many colleges offer some fantastic scholarships.  Make sure your child applies to more than one college.  You will be pleasantly surprised.  We have young friends who began at the Community College, were accepted into the Honors Program at the Community College, and received some extremely generous scholarships from the Community College, and some nice transfer scholarships from their 4 year schools.

If we had to do it differently?

1) We only invested in 2 years of the pre-paid trust.  I had stupidly thought that I'd be able to get the grandparents to invest in at least one more year for us.  I should not have counted on that.  I should have gone ahead and invested in 4 years.  I also should have invested soon after each of them was born.  Unfortunately, that was in one of the first few years of the plan's existence, and I was waiting for a legislative guarantee before we invested.


2) I would have socked some money away into the Maryland College Investment Plan, or another 529 investment plan.  This account can be used for college expenses.  We could have used this to pay for that difference between the pre-paid college trust and the final balances, textbooks, and the computer.

Food for thought.