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The College Planner allows you to analyze your situation with regards to saving for your child's college education. The planner allows you to compute one of the following variables while allowing you to modify the others:
| Initial Savings | |
Click this button to figure out how much savings you need to start with to reach your goal.
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For example, you may want to know 'how much should I start with if I want my 8 year old child to attend a college, which today costs $20,000 a year, and I can make monthly contributions of $200 into an account that will pay 8% per year?' |
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| Monthly Savings | |
To figure out how much you need to save monthly, you can choose to compute the monthly savings amount by clicking this button.
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For example, you may want to know 'how much should I contribute monthly into an account that will pay 8% per year, if annual costs for my 8 year old to attend college are $20,000, and I can afford to invest $8,000 right now?' |
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| Annual Yield | |
Click this button to figure out how much annualized interest your investment account should yield for you to be able to reach your goal.
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For example, you may want to know 'how much should my investment account earn for me to reach my goal of sending my 8 year old child to a 4 year college that costs $20,000 per year, if I start with $8,000 and can contribute upto $300 every month?' |
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| Time to College | |
To figure out how many years you need to invest to reach your goal, you can click this button.
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For example, you may want to know 'how many years will you need to invest an initial amount of $8,000 and a monthly contribution of $300 into an account that pays an interest of 8% per year, to be able to send your 8 year old to a $20,000 a year college?' |
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| Annual Cost Today | |
Click this button to figure out the most affordable college with your lump-sum and monthly savings for your child.
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For example, you may want to know 'in today's dollars, how much can I afford to spend for my 8 year old's college costs if I deposit $10,000 now and contribute $500 monthly for 10 years into an account that I know will average 10% annually?' |
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Once you choose a variable to compute, you can then click the diamond shaped sliders next to any of the other variables and drag them to the left or right to an appropriate value to get immediate answers for any number of 'What If' questions. However, if you want to enter an exact value for a variable and the sliders are unable to provide this, you may click the edit field and enter the exact value.
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'What if I can only average 8% per year?'
'What if I don't have any current savings?',
'What if I can save twice as much every month?',
'What if my child is 15 years old?'
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