529 & Other College Savings Plans For Dummies
by Margaret A. Munro
529 & Other College Savings Plans For Dummies
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Copyright 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2003115023
ISBN: 0-7645-3747-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Author
Margaret A. Munro, EA, (who answers to Peggy and is still trying to figure out why her parents named her Margaret) is a tax consultant/advisor/writer/ lecturer with over 30 years of experience in various areas of finance and taxation. She is an enrolled agent, licensed by the federal government to represent clients in the areas of tax and tax-related issues. She currently operates a widely diverse private practice that specializes in the financial concerns of families with school-age children, a group that is near and dear to her heart.
In addition to counseling her clients with young families on the advisability of college savings plans, Peggy has great personal experience in the area of paying for college. She began receiving grants and loans in 1977, is currently helping to pay for her husbands education, and realizes that, without college savings, she wont finish paying her sons college loans until 2027, fifty years after she began accumulating her own college debt. In the process of writing this book, she has taken her own advice and begun to save regularly.
Peggy is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University and has also attended University College Cork and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. She lives with her husband, Colin; her son, Jacob; and the family dog, Angus Mor, in central Vermont, where she teaches at her sons religious school and volunteers at the local elementary school.
Dedication
To Colin, Jacob, and Angus Mor, who make sure Im fed and watered during tax season and beyond. You deal with my episodes of stress and psychosis and love me in spite of them. You knew I could do this even when I didnt. Everything I achieve is sweeter to me because youre there to share it with me.
Authors Acknowledgments
Its hard to know where to begin when looking back at all the people who helped make this book happen. And I should start with Mrs. Benedetto in the 5th grade and Mr. Hancock, in the 11th, who taught me all about grammar and how to write so that it made sense.
While the ability to write is a necessary component of any book, an understanding of your subject matter is also key. I have been blessed to have many fine teachers and mentors who fostered this knowledge along the way: Sheldon Kaplow, who gave me my first job and taught me how to use a ten-key adding machine; Palmer Worthen, who threw me into the tax grinder and made sure I emerged relatively unscathed; and Marvin Sparrow, Monica Lewis, and all the other fine people at Goulston & Storrs, P.C., who honed my basic tax knowledge and taught me to look beyond the mere laws to how they affected people.
Obviously, this book would not exist without input from my extended family, my friends, and my clients (who, for obvious reasons, need to stay anonymous, but who know who they are), who have been coming to me for several years with questions about how, and how much, they should be saving for their childrens educations. Our discussions over time have been largely responsible for my thinking about common misconceptions and the amount of misinformation that flies around every sort of financial topic.
And then there are all the people who worked with me on this book: Scott Mendel and Pam Mourouzis, who started the ball rolling; Norm Crampton, whose enthusiasm is contagious; Jennifer Connolly, Mike Baker, and Chrissy Guthrie, my project editors who did just enough hand holding; Tina Sims for her copy-editing expertise (Im sure Ive been a trial to her); and Dave Murray and Molly Yuska at The National Center for College Costs, for their technical expertise. This book stands as a testament to all of you, and I thank you.
Finally, to Jacob, who kept feeding me the names of all of his classmates when I couldnt think up yet another name for an example, and to Colin, who was (is) my practice For Dummies reader and who made sure he could understand what I was talking about before I shipped chapters off to my editors I really couldnt have done this without you guys.
Publishers Acknowledgments
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