The Cost of College

College is expensive.  As with all expensive things, planning and talking through plans – even hopes and dreams – can make the situation more affordable in the long run.

Case in point: paying for college. Back in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s when a lot of the people reading this note went to college, college was mostly affordable depending on the choice of schools. The most expensive colleges and universities cost less than $15,000 or $20,000 per year (definitely, in the 1960’s and 1970’s). Although families still struggled to pay the cost for college in lots of cases.

person writing debt on paper
Talk with your kids about debt and its implications well before they start college.

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Remember College Graduation?

College graduation may have been a long, long time ago for some of us or more recently for others – or for your kids or grandkids.

Inspired by this weekend’s upcoming graduation at the University of Notre Dame and “graduation season” in general I offer several basic pieces of personal financial advice that hold meaning for nearly everyone at every age.

Notre Dame Continue reading “Remember College Graduation?”

Quadrant #3 of Saving: Personalize Your Savings Plan

More on Saving.  Saving is a critical subject at all ages — for the simple reason that savings and investments give people choices at various points in life.  In my latest series, I have broken down the concept of Saving into “4 Quadrants”:

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On Other than Politics

Trump, Comey, Mueller, Twitter, Fox News, CNN….it is all getting more than a bit chaotic.  Even the stock and bond markets jumped into the fray and took notice:

  • The  Dow Jones Industrials had their biggest down day since September on Wednesday (down a mere 1.8% but still up 12.4% since the November 2016 Presidential election).
  • The 10-year US Treasury rose on “safe-haven buying” with its yield moving down (meaning its price rose) 10 basis points from 2.34% early Tuesday to 2.23% during the day Wednesday. That’s a darn big one-day move for the 10-year US Treasury note yield.

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