So I am quickly approaching that dreadful time when my oldest heads off to college (I'm so not ready), and we've been saving for this since he was born - if he doesn't get any aid at all, we can cover one, maybe one and a half years, of most decent 4 year liberal arts institutions' tuition costs (he's leaning heavily toward chemical engineering as a career path, chemistry is his favorite subject, I have no idea
where he gets it). We've been attending college prep workshops at his high school, and each one makes us stress more about going into debt to help our kids get the educations they need to enter the careers of their choices (our daughter is thinking vet tech or animal shelter manager, but she's really into art too).
One of the most important, and game-changing conversations, hubby and I had with Jeanie when we were first reviewing our long-term financial/retirement planning was about college financial planning and how we could more effectively save money. Most parents know about 529s, and use those to help save for that huge expense, but 529s are included when FAFSA assesses your net worth, income, and assets for what they decide you can afford to pay. Jeanie mentioned that New York Life had investment products that we could put money into each month that
would not count against us when we were assessed for what we could cover! It was incredibly simple to set up, we enrolled in auto-deduction from hubby's paycheck, and like 529s, it's investment in the stock market so it has great growth potential. We wished that we'd known about this before we opened their 529s. We stopped putting money into those and switched over completely to investing with New York Life.
It's totally worth it to go to this upcoming workshop if you have kids, no matter what age they are. The team at New York Life are great people, they aren't going to badger or bully you into anything, they simply love to teach what they know and help you if they can! Please RSVP, you won't regret it.