Saving for College Expenses Early Puts Time on Your Side

Keeping up with the rising cost of college, especially in a dicey economic and market environment, is nothing like the good old days for some people.

"My father was a farmer and when the tuition bill came he always sold a cow," said Merra Lee Moffitt, a certified financial planner with Waddell & Reed in Wyomissing, Pa.

Moffitt's son plans to attend a private university and, with nary a bovine in sight, the family's college savings must get the job done. Unfortunately, too many parents who made earlier projections on rosy scenarios are now tempted to shove college savings to the back burner.

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Hispanic Futures Conference Voices Leadership and Change

"The idea is that with a degree, young Hispanics will be armed with the tools to be leaders and to affect change. "Leadership and Change" was the message of Saturday's Hispanic Futures Conference.

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Boost Your Credit Score

Ever since subprime mortgages became more "sub" than "prime," lenders have been tightening up on credit. The days of the nothing-down, no-documentation mortgage are gone.

Now homebuyers need a down payment and proof of income. What’s more, mortgage applicants need a winning credit score.

Credit scores are also weighed when you want to refinance a home loan or buy something on time. Some auto and home insurance companies will accept or reject you based on your credit score. Even if you’re accepted, the price you pay for insurance may vary according to your credit score.

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A Growing Trend: No More College Entrance Exams

High school juniors and seniors who have dreaded taking college entrance exams are learning that an increasing number of schools are no longer requiring them as part of the application process. ACTs and SATs, two tests nearly universally accepted for years, will no longer be required of incoming freshmen at Wake Forest University and some other schools.

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Cost-Cutting Tuition Tips

If you come up short, go back to the school's financial aid office to ask for more. "When do you stop asking a college for money? Never," said Tony Esposito, president of Lerner and Esposito College Consultants Inc. in Commack.

Look into a payment plan. Some schools let you spread payments out over several months, as long as the bill is paid by the end of the semester, says Cathy Malnichuck, director of financial aid at Farmingdale State College.

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The Student Loan CRUNCH

With more than 60 lenders leaving the federal student loan market, and private lenders tightening lending criteria or walking away from the business altogether, parents and students are facing what one expert called a "credit crunch and college financing storm."

Over the years, many parents have come to rely on private loans to close the gaps in student aid packages, with private loans accounting for 20 percent of all education borrowing.

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Teachers Help Teens Become Financially Savvy

More than 130 teachers from Western New York high schools are now using a Web-based curriculum called MoneySKILL® to help their students develop personal finance skills, thanks to outreach efforts by the School of Management and M&T Bank.

This year’s total represents a dramatic increase from the 16 teachers in a pilot program two years ago.

“We are thrilled to see that participation has really skyrocketed this year,” says John M. Thomas, dean of the School of Management. “We are especially pleased that 71 percent of Buffalo public high schools now have a teacher registered to use MoneySKILL.”

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Young People Love Credit Cards

With the credit crunch affecting spending and homeowners worrying about the stability of their finances, it seems that Britain’s youth are as hooked on credit cards as ever.

Young adults leaving education and entering employment are increasingly relying on credit cards to keep up with their busy lifestyles.

The older generation are reported to be cutting back on spending in a big way, causing many credit companies to worry about their future.

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Credit Cards Preferred to Loans: Survey

Consumers are avoiding personal loans and staying with credit cards even though they have higher interest rates because they cannot be bothered with the loan application, a survey says.

A Citibank survey has found consumers prefer to pay for large purchases with their credit card rather than take out a personal loan.

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Plan Can Help Make Graduation a Reality

It’s that time of year when students across the country are graduating from college. It took a lot of effort to earn those degrees, but it took something else, too — money. It’s this financial aspect of college that may concern you if you have children. How can you take some of the stress out of paying the high costs of higher education?

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Online Banking Clicks with Consumers

Ask Pat Johnson about online banking and you find one very satisfied customer.

"I love the convenience," she said. "If my personal account gets too low, I just click and transfer funds from savings. If I want to put more into savings, it's just as easy."

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Teens and the Mysteries of Money Management

May and June are big money months for high school and college graduates and their younger siblings who are making their First Communions and confirmations. For many of these young people, the cash and checks tucked into congratulatory cards could be the largest amounts of money they’ve ever received.

What they do with the money has some experts worried.

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Credit Score Plays Vital Role in World of Personal Finance

Jeffrey Sheldon, a 36-year-old Purcellville, Va., computer-systems administrator, has an enviable credit score of about 740. But he's planning to refinance his adjustable-rate mortgage in June and knows that lenders will be taking a particularly close look at his credit record.

So when Sheldon shopped for an auto loan last fall, he first compared rates online. Then, he allowed only two lenders to pull his credit report because he knew that lots of inquiries could drag down his score.

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Higher Ed, Not High School II

Thousands of high school graduates in Massachusetts are wasting time in college, taking remedial courses to learn material that they should already know. Despite years of education reform, the state's public schools still have to do more to prepare students for college.

A new report by state education officials sizes up the problem. Of 19,000 students who graduated from public high school in 2005 and went on to a state college or university, 37 percent took at least one remedial course in their first college semester, the report found.

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Running Out of Fuel, but Not Out of Ideas

Gasoline is unimaginably important in our lives in the United States. Without gas in virtually limitless supply, and at prices we could afford, American life would change. We could no longer afford to live so far from one another and from our jobs. We could no longer afford to cruise in cars incomparably larger than those of our counterparts in Europe and Asia. In a way, we would stop being America as we know it.

Maybe this would be a good thing. After all, do we really need to have a 6,000-pound S.U.V. take a 100-pound high school student across town to buy a Diet Coke? Do we really need cars so big that they have flat-screen televisions for the children in the back? Do we really need to pour so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? And it’s certainly not great to belch out immense quanta of carbon monoxide, a deadly poison.

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State Must Stop the Student Exodus

As black-robed students line up all over town to receive a diploma and a handshake, it's the perfect time to ask a devious question: How can we do a better job of connecting students to our region's innovation economy and persuade them to stick around after graduation?

Every year, about 74,000 people earn undergraduate or advanced degrees in Massachusetts. Of those graduating from private colleges and universities, about half choose to stay (the figure is higher for those educated at state schools), according to the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts.

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How to Improve Your Credit Report

Some experts say that you should close old credit cards that you're not using very often. That can be a good idea if you're tempted to max out your credit cards. However, John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com, calls this "probably the worst piece of advice that anybody can follow." That's for two reasons: First, the length of your credit history is determined by the age of your oldest account. The longer your history, the better. So even if your oldest account has some negative information on it, closing it could do more harm than good.

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Personal Finance With A Personality

Money is boring. Tracking expenses, creating and maintaining a budget, and finding the best deal are time consuming and tedious, otherwise we'd all do it all the time, right?

Money is pretty abstract. A plastic card in our wallets can be worth $10,000 while the car we bought two years ago is worth less than half what we paid for it. The value seems arbitrary. Money seems elusive to some people and in too much abundance to others. But money affects us all in profound ways.

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How to Borrow Money Responsibly

When you borrow money, you need to understand the difference between incurring necessary debt and unnecessary debt.

Necessary debt is incurred when you borrow money to purchase an essential item, such as a home or car, which you are unlikely to be able to buy outright with your cash savings alone.

Unnecessary debt is usually taken on to finance something that you do not really need or that you should be able to pay for in cash if you had budgeted properly.

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What to Do When Your Kid's College Fund is Tanking

The stock market hasn't been kind to investors in recent months, and that could be taking a toll on the Section 529 college savings accounts that many parents have set up for their kids. But families need to think carefully before tinkering too much with these tax-favored plans.

Setting money aside in a 529 plan offers tax benefits for families saving for college. A key thing to determine, experts say, is whether it's a good program that has merely hit a rough patch or whether it's basically flawed, with high fees and poor investment options.

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Education Agency’s Plan Shores Up Market for Loans to College Students

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on Wednesday announced a plan committing the federal government to buy college loans for the coming school year from student lending companies and to take other measures to ensure that despite troubled credit markets, students will have access to college financing.

The nation’s largest student lender, Sallie Mae, immediately praised the loan purchase plan, and said it would continue or perhaps even increase the breadth of its college lending this year.

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5 Ways to Prep for the SAT

The Scholastic Aptitude Test made its debut in 1926 and has been the bane of many a high school student’s existence ever since. This standardized test takes place seven times a year with the first date occurring in October and the last in June. The last test for this year’s season will take place on June 7.

The SAT tests skills in critical reading, mathematics and writing. According to The College Board, it is one of the most effective measures of a student’s college readiness. For students, it is one of the keys to getting into the college of their dreams. While the test itself takes three hours and 45 minutes to complete, the preparation time for many students extends far beyond that time.

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Is Financial Education Doomed to Get Failing Grades in Schools?

Recently there has been a lot of attention on the lack of financial education in the United States. Some experts have suggested that we need to educate people at an early age in order to reverse this trend. Although providing financial education in schools seems like a logical way to provide financial education to youth; however, some research appears to show that delivering financial education in the schools is not effective.

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Transfer Your Credit Card Balance For Free

A 0% balance transfer credit card is a wonderful thing. True, in a perfect world we wouldn't have debts to deal with at all, but -- in classic Foolish-style -- balance transfers give you the opportunity to get to grips with your credit card debt, without paying a single penny in interest for the entire 0% introductory period.

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Take Steps to Keep Money, Credit Cards Safe on Vacation Trips

As the summer travel season approaches, it's a good time to review the financial rules of the road. Consumers who take a few precautions before they leave home can help ensure that their cash and credit cards are safe and secure, whether their trips take them elsewhere in the country or overseas.

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Just-in-Time Billpay Meets Needs of Students' Shallow Pockets

Internet banking and bill-payment services provider Online Resources Corp. this week unveiled its expedited bill-pay service for financial institutions and walk-up providers to offer to consumers and small-business users, ratcheting up rivalries in the fast-growing realm of last-minute payments.

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Creative Ways to Meet College Expenses

May is graduation month! Many plan to attend college, so let’s look at some ways to curb increasing college costs.

One surefire way to cut college costs is to enroll in a local community college for a couple of years, where costs are often substantially less than four-year institutions. Then, after two years, transfer to a four-year institution. Your child’s diploma will be from the four-year institution, but your expenses won’t.

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Saving Today Makes College Costs Easier to Stomach Tomorrow

Higher education with lower costs is an easy combo to sell.

Two types of "529" education-savings plans are available to help families set aside money for future college costs, and the popularity of those plans - categorized as prepaid or savings - continues to soar.

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College Dropouts at a Disadvantage with the Competition in Job Market

A high school dropout applying for a job in sales at Gander Mountain might get hired, but shouldn't expect to move into management.

While the Wisconsin-based company doesn't require a high school education for sales associates positions, its management positions require a college degree plus at least three to five years of management experience elsewhere.

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Saving for Retirement Begins with First Day of Work

Americans are worried that they might not have enough money for retirement, as health care costs rise and inflation erodes the value of their savings, according to a survey released Monday.

The study sponsored by the Society of Actuaries, a professional organization based in Illinois, found widespread economic insecurity among retirees and those approaching retirement.

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New college grad? Now what?

Finals are over, you have packed up the dorm room and said good-bye to friends -- hopefully even landed that first job to put your foot on the career ladder. Now, while you have a clean slate, is the perfect time to get your personal financial life started on the right foot.

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Why You Need to Know About 529's

Lightening the tuition load doesn't get much easier than with 529 plans, which allow families to stash college money in an account where it can grow and compound tax free. Named after a section of the tax code and offered through states, 529 savings plans encourage parents to start socking away money early.

"That's what they do better than just about any financial vehicle out there," says Jackie Williams, director of Ohio's 529 plan and spokeswoman for the College Savings Plan Network. "Think of a 529 as a road map for financing college."

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How to "Financial Aid" Your Way Through College

College graduations are being held on campuses all over the land this month and they are a reminder that, for the next wave of incoming freshman, the complex process of financing their education is just about to begin in earnest.

To simplify it, consider these pointers from Charlene Haykel, CEO of Simply Student Aid, a company that educates incoming college students on the financial-aid process.

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So You Want to Borrow Some Money?

Do you remember when getting credit was as easy as taking candy from a baby? In pre-credit crunch times, banks seemed to dole it out like sweets.

But it has never been quite that simple for borrowers with credit problems or without a credit history. And with lending criteria getting tighter, it looks set to get even more difficult.

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One High School Finally Teaches Personal Finance Curriculum

The business of balancing a checkbook, understanding credit card offers, compounding interest and student loan systems will be just a few issues to be covered in a new course in personal finance to be offered in the 2008-09 school year at Mountain Home High School in Arkansas.

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Pick a Credit Card with Rewards That Make Sense for Students

The wallet-sized shape of reward cards is the same, but the cards come in different forms when it comes to how they pass on financial savings to customers.

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How Not to Get Stuck at the Campus Bookstore

Faced with flagging sales and an increase in fraud, retailers now make it tougher than ever to return items or exercise warranties. But thanks to some little-known credit-card protections, shoppers don't have to get stuck with unwanted or broken merchandise.

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Students Who Are Allergic to Saving Money Can Use Online Banking for Help

Most Americans aren't in the habit of saving money. In fact, our love of credit cards sent our savings rate into negative territory for the first time since the depression in 2005 and 2006, and it has barely recovered.

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Great, I'm in College...Now How Do I Pay For It?

On the brink of the biggest loan and credit crisis higher education has ever seen, the College Savings Foundation (CSF), a nonprofit whose mission is to help American families achieve their education savings goals, is gathering decision makers in universities, government and the financial industry for the first time to discuss the possibility that many families and students may not be able to pay their tuition bills this summer and that the long-term lending landscape for college financing will be forever changed.

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How to Harm Your Child's Perspectives on Money Without Really Trying

Most parents believe that allowing their kids to have credit cards at a young age teaches them a lesson about managing their finances or money. The one thing that the parents should be aware of in terms of giving their children credit cards is to ensure that these kids are given guidance as well as support for them to be responsible in handling their credit.

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New Ways to Cause Problems for Your Children

According to recent studies, approximately 8% of all American teens now have their own credit cards in their own names. Is this a good thing? That depends on how well-educated the teens are about credit card use - and debt.

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More Troubles for Borrowers of Student Loans

A computer error at student lender Sallie Mae resulted in about a million of its customers being erroneously reported for several days as delinquent on their loans, causing their credit scores to plunge before the problem was corrected, the company said Wednesday.

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Teens and Credit Cards - A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come

If you think getting your child a credit card in high school is a way to teach financial responsibility before the onslaught of college credit-card marketing inevitably overwhelms your kid, think again.

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Gas Tax Holiday Is No Holiday

The Presidential candidates have been answering critics about what they will do to lower gas prices if they were to take office. John McCain and Hillary Clinton believe that the gas tax of approximately 18.5 cents per gallon should take a holiday with the school kids this summer.

Barak Obama thinks this is a bad idea, more symbolism than substance. He figures that it will cost the government millions in needed highway funds and put road workers out of a job due to decreased tax revenues.

I agree completely with Obama on this. Look at some numbers. An average car has a 12-gallon tank and gets about 25 miles per gallon. Figure that most drivers are on the roads about 15,000 miles annually.

Using these assumptions, during the three months that the gas tax is lifted, Joe, or Jane, America would save about $30.

This is not enough to make me think that this tax hiatus is a good idea. It is not a panacea for the hole in my wallet when I pull up to the pump. A savings of less than 20 cents per gallon is insulting when its offer is intended to make me think that I'm getting something, when in reality I'm getting the same politicians' shell game that I've gotten for the 24 years that I've been voting.

This is an election year. Each candidate has his and her own remedies for all of society's ills. This gas tax hiatus is a bitter pill to swallow when I'm looking for an aggressive energy plan that rewards conservation rather than offers me a smoke and mirror illusion of savings for consumption.

Is there a spot on the ballot to mark "None of the Above?"