Book Description

Guess what. The average American family is paying a boatload more money than they need to for their child's college education. That's right! And the vast majority of CPAs, tax specialists, financial advisors, college counselors and your great uncle do not have the right information or the strategies for helping you deal with one of the biggest expenses in your life.Why is this? Because college planning is a highly specialized field, and there are only a small number of people who understand the complexities and best methods for saving significant amounts of money. In this book you will read about real-world people, my clients, and the broad spectrum of financial situations they are in, as well as what they themselves learned by working with me. You will understand why your typical financial advisor doesn't have a clue about how to help you.This book offers a quick and easy guide to saving you thousands of dollars. You can learn to use the same methods that a trained college professional planner uses daily. I give the reader access to the insiders' secrets and strategies that the pros use to reduce college costs significantly -planning that they charge thousands of dollars to carry out.Also, and this is the exciting part, you will discover in less than 5 minutes if you CAN reduce out-of-pocket costs for college every year by using our trademark College Cost Reduction Calculator.Don't waste your time with the FAFSA4Caster, web sites that have trial FAFSA calculators, or other college calculators that can only give you an estimated cost contribution. These calculators will not give you accurate information on how much you can reduce your college costs. The reason for this is that colleges don't want you to understand their mysterious college financial aid formulas!This book is a practical guide to how the system really works. I see people daily who need to find ways of financing their children's college education, and document their stories. These stories cover the gamut from tales of families going through divorce to folks who thought they had it all together, only to find they have set themselves up to pay significantly more than they should be paying. When I ask my clients the question, "How are you planning on paying for college, or what is your current plan to pay for college?" I hear the same answer over and over: "Scholarships and grants" or "Loans and scholarships." Nobody wants to hear that for most people, it's going to take hard, cold cash, and that the percentage of available scholarships is so small it isn't worth applying for them. When the reality hits home on how much financial hardship paying for college creates, it's disheartening to witness.I am delighted to offer this book as my contribution to the world at a time when college costs are soaring, and student loans put young people in servitude for their lives, making the American dream an impossible dream. I have written this book in an effort to cut through the subterfuge and confusion that surrounds college financial aid and to illuminate the way out.