Naperville Education Planning and Soaring College Costs

Sometimes even the best-laid plans can go awry. For example, you have probably been hearing for years about how much money you will need to set aside for your children’s college. The tuition numbers can be staggering. Yet those make up only part of the picture. Even the best Naperville education planning can leave you unprepared when your oldest heads off to school.

First of all, tuition is only the starting point of the costs. Fees get tacked onto that number, as in “tuition and fees.” If you’ve carefully set aside money for tuition, an additional two or three thousand more in fees can come as a shock. Next up is room and board. Those rates go up at least as fast as the cost of living, and no matter how often your new collegian used to raid the refrigerator at home, your grocery savings will not cover the rates on campus.

The final surprise, once you’ve structured the various bills and loans and gotten your college student moved in, comes at textbook purchasing time. A typical full-time student, with a course load of 15 or more hours, might spend $1200 to $1600 on books each year. Even careful Naperville asset management can have trouble keeping up when the cost of texts rises at double the rate of inflation.

Some students opt not to buy the books. This is truly a backwards way to approach the education that is costing so dearly. A better option is to attend each class once or twice before make book purchases, and make sure the instructor plans to use the text. (For some courses with multiple sections, different teachers will utilize different material). In the past, many students saved money by purchasing used books. This is still a great idea, but publishers today come out with new editions so frequently that it has become much harder to find a used version of the text you need. Fortunately, online resellers like Amazon.com can help you broaden your search.

In the end, it turns out that careful Naperville asset management doesn’t end when Junior heads off to campus. Hopefully your example of prudent Naperville education planning will prompt him or her to continue the pattern once making decisions like textbook purchasing. If your college student has already learned to be cautious and make comparisons when spending money, then he or she already has a head start on practical, applicable life skills. Who needs college courses when they’ve got you setting such a good example?

The Importance of a Financial Education

While my 13-year-old daughter and I were watching the movie “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” I laughed, but it was pained, strained laughter. The lead character in the movie is a young woman who, although in debt up to her eyeballs, lands a job as a financial advice columnist. The painful laughter came during the shopping scenes, as the young woman frantically tried to get the remaining credit on her cards to add up to the cost of a scarf she simply had to have, or when her face lit up as she left a store laden with bags. I definitely recognized something familiar about her. I have seen the same acquisitive gleam in my daughter’s eyes.

In addition to the camaraderie found through soccer teams, swim teams, and youth groups, Naperville tweens and teens—particularly girls—have another popular group activity: shopping. If it were a competitive sport, local girls could probably put together a state championship team! Between the delightful charms of our downtown district and the proximity of Fox Valley Mall, shopping fanatics have plenty of lures. When one girl says to another, “Let’s hang out,” it usually translates to, “Let’s spend money.” In fact, hanging out at the mall ranks high on the list of favorite activities for many.

This hanging out can be a relatively harmless activity. The main concern I have is in teaching my daughter moderation and planning. It’s not always easy for a 13-year-old to differentiate between a want and a need. Even at her age, she can be practicing her own level of Naperville financial planning. Different families handle this different ways: maybe with a set clothing allowance or an agreement to split the cost of purchases. My daughter is very reluctant to part with her own money, for which I’m grateful. I’d hate to worry that she was one of those identified by psychologists as “recreational shoppers.” These are people for whom shopping has an inordinate value: it’s used to help achieve happiness. Recreational shoppers tend to be female, with a lack of confidence and self-worth. They frequently utilize shopping as fantasy, while they pretend to be someone else. The many attractive shopping venues around here make Naperville wealth management quite difficult for the recreational shopper.

Just like much of parenting, striving to teach my daughter some frugality will involve persistent effort. If I maintain my vigilance, hopefully her own teen years will not provide the script for “Confessions of a Shopaholic 2”!