Hupalo John A. - Plan and finance your familys college dreams: a parents step-by-step guide from pre-k to senior year

Fortunately, there are only two questions that students and families have to answer when it comes to college:

Can the student get into the school th ey want?

How can we pay for it?

Those fifteen simple words sure cause a lot of anxiety for f amilies.

College planning can be a stressful and confusing process and is particularly overwhelming for those who startor think they starttoo late. Many parents feel ill-prepared to deal with the complexities of saving for college and then successfully navigate the college admissions process. The result: Many families simply wait and defer to high school guidance counselors and begin to focus in the childs junior year. Other parentssome in panic modeemploy expensive college coaches or college consultants to help them with the college process. Either way, the die has already been cast by then, and meaningfully affecting a more positive outcome is quite di fficult.

This book is designed for parents with newborns to high school seniors. The primary goal is to demystify the process by providing age-appropriate guidance and information to help you understand how to plan and save for college for children of any age. As parents, we want to increase our childs college options and ensure their success when it is time to select, apply to, and attend the college of their dreams. Starting a savings plan as early as possible contributes to the attainment of that dream by providing increased college options, while minimizing burdensome college loans for you and you r child.

Heres what we believe:

You will be significantly better off if you start planning and saving nowno matter how old your children are or what grade they are in. Even minimal attention or small amounts of savings will compound and produce larger gains in the future.

You can take control of the college admission process to minimize the emotional toll on you and your children. This process is not pre-ordained to be an emotionally gut-wrenching, knockdown, drag-out fight. It can actually bring your family closer together at a critical time in the life of all families: when teenagers are spreading their wings to become young adults.

Planning and paying for college is a family affair. The decisions you make for your first child are likely to have a significant impact on the children that follow, unless, of course, you have just on e child.

The right college fit means selecting a school that you can afford, that is a good value, and that offers students an environment in which they can thrive and be successfulsocially and acade mically.

As a parent, you dont need fancy marketing firms with focus groups to tell you that saving for college and then matching your child with the college of their dreams can be confusing and overwhelming. Why? Because it hits two of our top hot button emotional issues: our kids and our finances. It s the daily double of parental fragility and raises all kinds of ancillary questionsnot the least of which is: Whose decision is it? Yours or your students? We know a few things abo ut this:

There is no correct answer. The final decision maker varies from family to familyand sometimes its different with each child in the family. There is no one size fits all model.

Preparing for and selecting a college comes at a time when our kids are quickly transitioning to young adulthood and increasingly exercising their will to be free of parental control.

Choosing a college may well be a young persons first major life decisionand is likely to be the most expensive one for a decade or more to come! As parents, we want to be supportive but often struggle to determine how best to help. For many, it is also a reality that hard-earned savings are now at risksavings often resulting from significant sacrifices made over many years. So we have a vested interest not only in wanting our children to be happy and successful but also in knowing there will be a tangible return on that inv estment.

Notice that we have not talked about the large elephant in the room over which none of us has control: the runaway cost of college. This book is written to provide some navigation tools to deal with issues you can control from the time your child is born through senior year in high school. This book offers concrete steps you can take to best position your children individually and your family as a whole to plan and save for college no matter what happens with the variables we cant control.

Planning and paying for college is an innately emotional process. However, by following our guidance, you can have much more control over the process and outcomes than you may think. Understanding the cost and value of different colleges, your options to establish a consistent savings program, and how to navigate the admissions and financial aid processes early will best position your children (and your family) for personal, academic, and financial success.

Together, we have more than sixty years of professional experience planning and paying for college, including serving as an admissions interviewer for Harvard College for over thirty-six years. Nationally, we have been pioneers, innovators, and leaders in the creation of both the 529 and private credit student loan industries and have positively influenced many of the programs in plac e today.

With our wives, we have also successfully helped our 5 children, 2 of whom are still in college, successfully navigate the college admissions and financing process. We know firsthand, not just professionally, the real challenges and emotional issues facing both parents and children throughout the college process.

Our goal in writing this book and creating our website, www.InviteEducation.com, is to share our knowledge and experience with you. By providing straightforward information and clear guidance, we want to help you help your child achieve the best possible outcome given his or her goals, abilities, and potential. The outcome parents desire mostsuccessful college graduates with terrific job prospects and minimal debtcan be a chieved.

Go od luck!

John A . Hupalo

Peter Mazarea s, Ph.D.