Canajun Finances

Should Parents Pay for University?

Canajun Finance — 2006-06-01 13:49:00

A good comment from my post a couple of days ago from a recent Graduate from my Alma Mater, was, "Why do you think you must pay for your kids education?". That's a good question, and the answer I have is, I don't think I HAVE to pay for it, and if my kids say to me, "I want to pay for this myself", I think I would be delighted, but I don't want a situation to arise where one of my children cannot take advantage of a post-secondary opportunity because she or he thinks it is too expensive.

A lot of the people who I view as financially intelligent paid for their own University Educations, and they may not say it, but seem quite proud of that fact. My parents on the other hand paid for my education, so there are two ways to look at this idea.

I guess I'll only really know about all of this once they reach the University age, but I do have money put away already to deal with at least the first couple of years of education.

I think this is why my generation has been dubbed the "sandwich" generation because we want to take care of everyone, our aging parents and our kids. Maybe we are just a generation of wanna-be martyrs as well. --C8j

University Education in Canada

Canajun Finance — 2006-05-29 10:47:00

So after attending my 20th anniversary alumni weekend, I have a new respect for having to save a pack-load of money to get your kids into University (and out the other end). You guys curious as to what my Alma Mater says your costs might be (in this year''s money too folks, remember you have got to expect an increase in cost here):

Tuition Fees?

Co-op

$2,919 - $5,911

$5,838 - $11,822

First number is for a four month term the second set of numbers is for 8 months.

Living on Campus?

Single

$3,900

Included

$7,800

So this is for one of the Church Colleges on Campus, so that includes food too, but $7800 for 8 months. Yes living off campus is cheaper, but that has other costs like transport to take into mind as well.

Text Books?

Mathematics

$722

$1,444

So that is the 4 month and 8 month costs. Yes that is $1444 for books. Might want your kids to figure out where the used book store is!

You want the whole ugly thing in one table? Well check this link for the entire article, but here it is:

Domestic student - co-op
Living	Tuition	Books	Other	Residence	Rent and local transportation**	Groceries	8-month school year
In residence	$5,838 - $11,822	$1,294	$2,512	$6,862 - $8,238	-	-	$16,486 - $23,866
Off campus				-	$3,992	$2,008	$15,644 - $21,628
At home				-	-	-	$9,644 - $15,628

How much were you planning on putting in your RESPs? Still think it is silly to start saving for University when your child is still in diapers? Remember, you have 4 8 month stints to pay.

Sorry for the sticker shock folks. --C8j

Boy am I a drip

Canajun Finance — 2006-05-26 09:12:00

Drip, drip, drip, you can waste a lot of water leaving a dripping tap, but if you allow the dividends from your stocks to DRIP, you are building wealth? Wild eh?

What's a drip (nice picture from flickr eh?), well the i is added in kind of, but it is Dividend Reinvestment Plan, is what the TLA (three letter acronym) means. Typically a stock, or mutual fund (I think) will offer this to their shareholders. You sign up for this and instead of getting your Dividends as cold hard cash, you get it as Stock in the company, and typically the stock purchase has no brokerage fees (which is always nice). The Motley Fools talk about DRPs here, and this is a good example article from Canadian Moneysaver by Robert Gibb talking about which Canadian companies you should sign up with to get this program.

Now I had forgotten about this method of investing, but thanks to the Moneysaver web site, I have remembered and am now about to sign up for DRPs for the bank stocks that I already own. The Canadian Capitalist tweaked me to go look at the Moneysaver web site, so again, Good On You, my friend. --C8j