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Your College Student and Financial Planning Thumbnail

Your College Student and Financial Planning

College Planning Managing Your Finances

Today's article was written by Financial Coach Tonia Peasley, AFC®


It is that time of year where important notifications come into email inboxes and/or mailboxes notifying individuals of college acceptances. It is a time to celebrate the hard work of your student and to make decisions about their futures. Now, more than ever, creating a spending plan for your young adult is important. With the increased inflation reports, and with the costs of everyday goods and services on the rise, knowing how much spending is going on in different categories, gives a baseline to understand how expenses might grow over the next 4-5 years. Here are a few tips to help make good financial decisions before and during the college years.

  • Use the following spreadsheet to determine how much funding your student will need to meet monthly and yearly expenditures. College monthly and yearly spending plan spreadsheet. Not only will students need to budget for tuition, fees and supplies, they will also need to budget for monthly expenses while living away from home. The spreadsheet can also be used to help determine if there will be deficiencies in providing funding for college.
  • Once you have a firm understanding of monthly and one-time expenses, use the spreadsheet to start a discussion about how much you, as a parent, will provide toward your student’s living expenses and if you expect the student to contribute. Most individuals leaving home for the first time have no idea the different categories of expenses they might encounter. Using the spreadsheet helps to open dialogue between you and your student to outline some of these expenses and to guide them in making good financial decisions.
  • Categories such as housing, meal plans, and transportation are addressed in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is designed to list these expenses per semester and to list a yearly total. Enable your student with the ability to use the spreadsheet to guide their monthly expenses and to make sure they are living within their means.
  • You can input numbers directly from financial aid awards to help identify and compare financial aid packages such as grants, scholarships and student loans. Feel free to modify the spreadsheet by saving and copying/pasting columns to compare financial aid awards.

As always, we understand these discussions can be difficult to approach and not always the easiest to have.  Our Financial Coaching program is designed to provide clear guidance in debt management, beginning investing and saving, and to provide a framework of financial literacy. Providing Financial Literacy and guidance is an investment that can last a lifetime. We are here to help, just give us a call.

If you found this article useful, you might like the following blog posts:

Military Finances 101: College Funding Choices


Military Finances 101: 6 College Planning Mistakes to Avoid


GI Bill. 529 Funds. Which Should I Use First?


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