Advanced Wellbeing offers financial therapy insights each week to inform more details about financial therapy.
It’s common for parents of high school seniors to joke, “At least when he goes off to college we won’t have to feed him! Think of how much we’ll save on grocery bills.”
If you look carefully at actual college costs, this may not be such a joke. Is education as unaffordable as it seems?
The intention behind the Trump Account—helping children build wealth and closing the opportunity gap—is a worthy one. But the way this product is structured does more to generate political headlines than to solve real financial problems.
Members of the Class of 2025 have been hearing powerful messages from commencement speakers about purpose, ambition, and changing the world. Graduation is a moment that calls for big dreams.
Another message that I would tell graduates is this: A college degree may be personally meaningful, but it might not get you where you want to go financially. In many cases, a technical school or skilled trade could offer a more reliable path to both income and independence.
Unused college funds in a child’s 529 plan can now be rolled over into a Roth IRA in their name
If you’re looking for a financial advisor, one of the first things you may notice is the array of letters behind their names. Chances are you don’t know what all these designations mean, and your eyes may glaze over just reading them.
Yet those designations matter.
For someone who never borrowed money for college, who paid off their student loans, or whose education debt was not eligible for loan forgiveness, what might it feel like to witness others having a portion or all of their college loan debt forgiven?
Since I first wrote on the increasing cost of a college education in 2011, has anything changed? The short answer is “no.” Between 1980 and 2020, inflation rose 95% while the cost of an average college education rose 148%. A four-year degree that cost $50,000 in 1980 would cost $124,000 now.
As a consumer, what can you do?
If the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is successful in getting a new rule enforced, non-compete agreements may soon become illegal in all 50 states. Not surprisingly, while the change may make sense on the surface, the unintended consequences may go much deeper.
My CFP peers across the nation are probably tired of hearing me sing the praises of living in South Dakota. One of them recently emailed some disturbing news that put some sour notes in my “South Dakota is God’s Country” song. A recent national survey that ranked the financial literacy of US states and the District of Columbia ranked South Dakota at 49th.
For our ancestors, even as recently as the 19th Century in many places, survival skills were hands-on. If you didn’t know how to build a house, farm, hunt, butcher animals, sew, and cook, you couldn’t provide well for your family. Money skills were largely worthless.
It’s completely different today.
