Tag Archives: Student finance

5 Ways to Help Your Children Financially Prepare for College

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As secondary education continues to get more expensive, teaching your children financial responsibility, as well as helping them out with the monetary burden of college, becomes crucial. While you always want your children to have it better than you did, teaching them how to budget and handle money is important not only in saving you some cash, but developing them as productive people. Here are a few simple way to get your child financially ready for university life.

1. Have Your Child Get a Job

Financially Prepare for College

Ways to Help Your Children Financially Prepare for College

 

Image via flickr by Waponi

You should have your child get a job in high school. This teaches him responsibility and how to make money. By the time he reaches college, don’t just hand over money. Offer to supplement his income for spending money, but only if he gets a part-time job.

Although college does require studying and class work, there is still a lot of downtime for your child to pick up a 10 to 20 hour a week job. By being employed and earning some of his own income, your child will learn to appreciate the money he gets.

2. Prepare a Budget

Before your child heads off to college, sit him down and show him how to make a budget. Demonstrate the differences between wants and needs and mention that he doesn’t have to pay for other people, be it food or entertainment. List all the different categories of expenditures and what percentage of his money should go to each piece of the pie. This will teach him not to overspend on frivolous things.

3. Utilize Apps

Smart phones offer quite a variety of apps to help money management become simple. Mint is just one of many free apps that allows you to view your bank accounts, income, and expenditures. It also has an alarm that goes off when you are reaching your spending limit. Because the younger generation is glued to their smart phones, why not give your child a constant reminder of budgeting if he is going to be on his phone anyway.

4. Teach About Investing

Often, parents will just give their children money or a credit card when they go to college, but this is actually counterproductive. If you feel you must hand over money, make it into a learning experience. Give them $500 to invest in stocks. The sooner they learn about the risks and benefits of the stock market, the better.

You can even make them read about financial investments. One such book is Fisher Investments on Materials, which can benefit both new and seasoned investors about the materials market, which is ever-changing and growing.

5. Take Out a Student Loan

While this may not seem like the greatest option, the learning value is incredible. Even if you don’t have your child take out a traditional student loan, have him pay you back some of the money. You don’t have to make him sign an official loan with you, just put forward all the information.

Your child will learn about interest and how to pay for a loan on a monthly basis. This will prepare him for the real world when he purchases a house or a car.

Teaching your child fiscal responsibility is a difficult task. But the sooner you teach him the ins and outs of handling money and meeting financial obligations, the more able he’ll be to deal with it once he is on his own. College is just the first step of taking off the training wheels.

 

Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and don’ts

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Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and don’ts from UCAS.

 

Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and dont’s by Cathy Gilbert, Director of Customer Strategy at UCAS

Do – research your university and degree course choices carefully before applying. For me, that should include going to open days as well as looking at the online information. You’ll spend three or four years studying in higher education, so you should be really passionate about the course content and your chosen place of study.

Do – remember the UCAS application deadlines. The first date on the horizon this year is the 15 October deadline for applying to Oxford and Cambridge, and for courses anywhere in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and veterinary science. The key deadline for most other courses is 15 January next year. You’ll have to send your application to us by this time to be certain of consideration.

Do – make the most of the help available from UCAS on ucas.com. Working through our Six steps to applying will make the process much easier. You can also watch videos on UCAStv featuring students who have already started and been through big events like Freshers’ Week. If you have a burning question at any stage of the process why not ask our team of experts on Twitter (@ucas_online) and Facebook (/ucasonline)? You’ll get a clear answer back very quickly.

Don’t – forget that some universities and colleges will ask you to sit an admissions test in addition to the standard qualifications. The Admissions tests section of the UCAS website will help you understand some of these and the UCAS bookstore has guides dedicated to many of them.

Don’t – be tempted to submit a copied personal statement or one downloaded from a website. Thankfully, only one percent of applicants did this last year. UCAS is quite clear that personal statements should be an applicant’s own work, although we do advise that parents and teachers check them over. Our computer system has tens of thousands of personal statements on file and similarities will be flagged up to the universities.

Don’t – panic about tuition fees. There is a wealth of information out there to help you understand the costs of higher education – and remember you won’t have to pay anything upfront. You can visit the Student finance section of our website to find out more, or visit Moneysavingexpert’s Students section.