Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or other book of interest.

The New Global Student by Maya Frost is one of those books that takes what you think you know about a subject and flips it on its ear. This time around, it’s the standard route that most high schoolers take towards their education: take lots of AP classes, sweat about the ACT and SAT, apply to hyper-competitive colleges and hope you get in, apply for piles of scholarships, sweat out the FAFSA, then go on to college, where you’ll likely be buried in mountains of student loans.

This process is seen as so standard that many people don’t even question whether or not it makes sense to start pushing our fourteen and fifteen year olds through this woodchipper. The New Global Student argues that this path is not the only path – in fact, Frost argues that there is a much better way to help your children transition into the latter stages of their education. Hence the eye-catching subtitle: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education.

I fully expect that many people will immediately reject the central premise of this book – that the “traditional hypercompetitive SAT/AP/GPA path” can be easily dumped and a new path to educational success can be found. All I can say is this: time and time again, throughout my college career, the people that seemed to have the best grasp of what they needed to do to succeed and the value they could get out of college were people who came in from outside that treadmill.

Ready to dig in? Here are my impressions of and thoughts on The New Global Student.

One: Creative, Not Crazy – Our Family’s Story
In the summer of 2005, the Frost family sold everything and moved to Mexico for a year, then to Argentina. The family had four teenage daughters, including a high school freshman, a junior, and a senior, and they were unable to speak Spanish when they left. Not only that, the girls also spent years in other countries on yearlong exchanges. They did not worry too much about the perfect GPA and they also didn’t take the SAT. You might think that this would blow up all of the girls’ chances of getting into a good school, but instead it did the opposite – it painted very compelling pictures of young women who were experiencing the world, not just pumping up their numbers. Compelling enough to get them piles of scholarships and admissions to good schools.

Two: Beyond Math and Mandarin
Frost’s argument about why all of this works really boils down to two big factors. First, the diversity of experiences forced the children to learn how to be collaborative. They were constantly being put into cultural and intellectual situations where they had to learn to work well with others in order to get through it. In contrast, high school in America – with the SAT/GPA/AP milestones – are highly competitive without much focus on collaboration. The collaborative nature of their high school experience, in other words, was a huge advantage.

Second, the children were heavily ingrained throughout their lives with five key principles: flexibility (independent thinking, eagerness to explore new ideas and places), awareness (ability to intelligently discuss a wide variety of topics, compassion and respect for others), curiosity (an interest in a variety of areas and the ability to ask questions and investigate those areas), trustworthiness (realization of the vitality of being dependable, strong communication skills, complete things on time), and self-direction (establish and move towards goals, internalized work ethic and motivation).

These aspects combine together to make young people who are ready to tackle anything. In my eyes, it’s a great recipe for parenting in the modern world – I strive for all of these things with my own children, even at their young age.

Three: Fego: You’re Soaking in It!
What keeps our children from having these attributes? Frost points at two huge factors.

First, fear. We fear letting go of our kids. We fear not doing enough. We fear taking charge. We fear slowing down. We fear unstructured time and unstructured activities. We fear falling behind. These fears all lead us towards pushing our children hard down that typical path. Instead, we’re better off hammering in the big principles of independent thought and self-responsibility when they’re young and letting go as much as we can when they’re older.

Second, ego. We want to believe that we’re vital to the process of our children’s final steps towards adulthood. We’re not. Once puberty hits, we’re a support staff – we’re no longer absolutely vital to the process. Similarly, we tie our own sense of self-worth to the accomplishments of our children – if our kids get a high score on the SAT or get an A in an AP class, that’s proof that we’re great and something we can brag about to others, right? Wrong. It’s just ego fuel that actually hurts our kids.

Another interesting argument: our children have huge advantages with the advent of computers, the internet age, and the easy access to information. Shouldn’t this mean that they blow us away in terms of intellectual growth at a young age? The problem is that instead of focusing on actually raising intellectually curious and self-reliant kids, we focus on them getting A’s in classes that likely aren’t pushing them very hard at all. So why should they grow if all that matters is that A? Instead, the book suggests using local community colleges to put your child in genuinely challenging classes that really push them – a “B” in a class that really pushes their work ethic and intellect is much more valuable than a cruise-control “A” in every aspect other than the almighty GPA.

Four: AP, IB, & SAT – OMG!
So many students today stress themselves out over taking tons of AP classes and getting a great SAT score. Frost argues that both of these have less value in terms of getting into college than you might think.

First of all, she argues that so many students are taking AP courses that they’re becoming watered down. With B- students taking the courses and sometimes passing, the material may be at a somewhat lower level than before. On top of that, students are now taking three or four AP courses at once. As a result, many colleges are eliminating the credits they offer in exchange for AP courses. In the end, the value of an AP course is lower than it once was, both in terms of what’s learned and in terms of how colleges value it.

A similar phenomenon is happening with the SAT and ACT. High schools are now beginning to require the exams; meanwhile, community colleges don’t require the test at all and most colleges and universities are de-emphasizing the test in terms of admission criteria. In other words, instead of becoming a useful prep tool for college, it’s become so universalized that it no longer matters as much as it once did.

What does matter, then? How can a student stand out? Frost points towards the IB, which provides a rigorous plan of study available in many different nations that, upon completion, is accepted (and often considered quite valuable) for college admission. Plus, the IB de-emphasizes the pressure of AP classes and the SAT, instead focusing on teaching how to learn and how to collaborate, skills invaluable in a person’s career. Another approach: taking the GED as early as possible, skipping the high school “experience,” and moving on to college early.

Five: Meet the New A Student: Artful, Advanced, Atypical, and Adventurous
Frost argues (quite well, with a pile of anecdotes) that a well-balanced student is incredibly well served by spending time abroad during their high school experience. Such an experience provides a huge deal of personal growth, vastly improves personal awareness, and demonstrates on college applications that a student is committed to outside-the-box exploration.

Here’s the thing: people at this age are passionate and that passion floods in surprising directions. If you stifle that passion and attempt to channel it in a way you see fit, you’re likely to see the dam break and see passion flow in a terrible direction. Instead, offer your child as many positive channels as possible and see where their passion takes them. Putting a study abroad experience on the table certainly does that.

Six: The Boldest Advantage: A Yearlong High School Exchange
Almost all parents feel some strong reticence at the idea of sending their child abroad for a year to study. That’s the “fear and ego” mentioned earlier raising its head.

Instead, a study abroad program – if done with thought and planning – is probably the best move you could make for your child. It’ll help you deal with the “empty nest” problem in a cold turkey way, keeping you from being a helicopter parent when your child moves on. It’ll show your child in the clearest way possible that you respect their independence. Most importantly, though, it’ll give your child a huge dose of personal and intellectual growth as they learn about a different culture and different way of life while also continuing their education. Few things set up a student better for college than such an adventure.

How can you make the most of this? Go early (sophomore year is a good target), go long (a full year instead of a semester), and go challenging (a place with a different language and a different culture).

Seven: How to Save Thousands on College: Study Abroad
A similar philosophy applies in college – go early (sophomore year is a good target), go long (a full year instead of a semester), and go challenging (a place with a different language and a different culture). A study abroad program while in college also has an additional benefit: it’s cheap.

Many people scoff at this, pointing toward expensive study abroad packages offered by schools. The truth, though, is that those packages are often glorified travel packages – instead of immersing the student in another culture, it actually isolates them in a vacation-like bubble, housing them with other native English speakers and providing every possible accommodation. Very little actual value is gained.

Instead, consider applying directly to the university you desire to attend as an independent international student. You’ll live in the same housing as students there and will be fully immersed in the culture instead of isolated in a “submarine” of your own culture. Plus, the price is reasonable – often very reasonable. In many cases, it’s far less expensive than the price you’re paying for university at home.

Eight: The Full Family Deal: Sabbatical or Sell-It-All?
A third option – one that works well if you have multiple high-schoolers at once – is to simply spend a year abroad, enrolling your kids in school in that country for a year. This will be something we consider circa 2019, for example, when we have two children in early high school.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for everyone, but it does have certain advantages. If you can find a job in your career in another country, it’s a huge resume booster. If you’re engaged in a creative career, immersing yourself in a different culture can pay real dividends.

This is something that’s at least on the radar for us in several years. If my wife can get a job teaching English in another country for a year, we would be quite interested in pursuing this. I can in theory write from anywhere, too, so that also helps.

One good compromise – a summer-long sabbatical. Rent an apartment in a foreign nation for three months and see how things go. Engage in every activity you can while there – not tourist stops, but the way of life that people have there. Shop at their stores. Eat their food. Learn their language.

Nine: The Get-Real Guide for Bold Parents
The final chapter is something of a clean-up of the many issues brought up by this book. How do you handle the criticism from others who say you’re sinking your child’s chances because you’re not following the “normal” path? What about their safety?

Each of these questions has a very reasonable answer. As for the criticism, such study abroad programs actually vastly improve chances of college acceptance and of growing a student to the point where they can really take advantage of college. With the safety issue, high school students are often more safe abroad than at home – no drivers under the age of eighteen, students are protected from anti-American sentiments by their youth, and students are naturally more cautious because they’re in unfamiliar territory.

Is The New Global Student Worth Reading?
I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been questioning the absoluteness of the high school/SAT/college application/expensive college pipeline for a long time. I’m actually in favor of delaying college for a year or two after high school, allowing other life experiences to fill in the gap. Why not let a student spend a year working hard at a job or for a non-profit in between high school and college, learning what it actually means to earn a paycheck and make ends meet and what the value of a college education actually is. I know I certainly would have benefited from such a sojourn. I’ve also been thinking a lot about traveling abroad for an extended period when my children are older, perhaps spending a year in another country and allowing them to attend school there (Great Britain, perhaps, or maybe a nation where we don’t speak the language natively).

Reading The New Global Student actually knocked down the idea of the standard pipeline even more. It’s loaded with food for thought for any person with children school-aged or younger. Even if you consider the general idea to be nonsensical, there’s enough material in here about how to set the path for your child to excel in their educational and professional career and save money along the way that it’s at least worth a read for specific tips.

For us, it’s opened the door to a lot of discussion about what we can do as parents to prepare our children for this ever-shrinking world.

If you have kids, you owe it to yourself to read this one. It’ll really make you think about their education and how simply connecting the dots might not be the best route.

When I was in college, the vast majority of my classes were effectively training for a career in research and scientific data management. Seven years after graduation, though, I find myself drawing instead on the transferrable skills I picked up in other classes: public speaking, writing, leadership, information management, and so on. To put it simply, transferrable skills are those things that you can utilize no matter what specific career path you find yourself on.

Transferrable skills are often left by the wayside in competitive college majors. In order for a computer science major to get a leg up in the post-graduation workplace, for example, it’s often preferable to jam in another programming or algorithms class than it is to insert another public speaking class. Even if the program does require classes on transferrable skills, those classes are often looked down upon as “blow off” classes – ones that have to be finished in order to get down to the real classes within the major.

I believe this is a mistake. As change in this world accelerates, people are spending less and less of their life strapped to one particular career. They have the freedom to choose other avenues – starting a new career, starting their own businesses, and so on. In that environment, transferrable skills become more and more valuable. In fact, a well-polished transferrable skill makes for brilliant resume fodder no matter what your job – communication skills and leadership experience are a plus for almost any post-college job you might apply for.

Obviously, course loads often aren’t very flexible in a college environment, so my recommendation would be for college students to seek out other sources for picking up and mastering transferrable skills – extracurricular activities, internships, and other sources. Beyond college, transferrable skills are useful for everyone to work on at any stage in one’s career

Here are six significant areas of transferrable skill well worth working on, both to improve yourself and to prepare for your future.

Leadership Can you actually lead a team? Can you herd a group of people towards a greater purpose? Are you self-motivated enough to do this? Can you set goals and actually achieve them? Can you plan large projects and push them forward?

How can I get it? Join a community or student organization and take charge of a large project. Later, run for a leadership position within that group. The best way to learn leadership skills is to learn them in the laboratory of life, and organizations provide the perfect opportunity.

Administrative skills Are you able to prioritize the tasks in front of you? Can you analyze information and then describe it in layman’s terms for others to understand? Can you interpret rules and use them effectively?

How can I get it? Get involved in the planning of as many large projects as you can. Project planning teaches you many of the administrative skills you’ll need in life. If there is a large project, volunteer to help with the planning – if there’s already a planner in place, learn everything you can from that planner.

Information management Can you actually research a topic? Can you take a pile of research and use it to answer worthwhile questions? Can you communicate those facts to others? Can you manage a budget and handle financial records? Can you use a wide variety of computer programs?

How can I get it? If there are opportunities to present anywhere around you, take them, even if you aren’t familiar with the topic. Of particular use are topic areas where you’ll have to do some research in order to get the presentation right. Another great avenue is to volunteer to be the secretary or (particularly) the treasurer for a group. Such activities will require you to carefully manage a large amount of information on behalf of a large group.

Creativity Can you come up with interesting ideas of all kinds? Are you good at coming up with marketing ideas? Are you good at formulating the next step in a process? Are you good at creating visually appealing layouts?

How can I get it? Create some websites for groups – and learn how to do it along the way. Whenever there’s an opportunity for brainstorming, get involved and throw out ideas. Creativity is something that is best learned by practice – so practice it.

Interpersonal communications Are you willing to speak in public? Can you communicate your ideas well in writing? Can you lead a conversation? When you communicate with others, do they understand your ideas?

How can I get it? Participate in conversations and meetings instead of just sitting there. Volunteer for any and all public speaking opportunities that come your way. Volunteer for difficult and arduous tasks of documentation – that’s the best way possible to practice writing to communicate information.

Personal development Can you use the experiences in your life as a source for growth and personal change? Do you have a personal moral code that you actually follow? Can you effectively and honestly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of others (both people and things)? Can you deal with stress?

How can I get it? Don’t shy away from challenges – step up to big projects. Keep a journal and use it to explore what you really think about things, particularly the people around you.

Every moment you spend learning the above skills is a valuable moment. You’ll find yourself returning to these skills time and time again throughout your life – and they’ll provide a surprisingly strong backbone for your career and personal success.

A reader that I’ll call “Maggie” writes in with an interesting question:

I manage a federal TRiO grant at a community college in Arkansas. If our funding proposal is approved again next year, we are required to include programs on financial literacy, as required by the new Higher Ed Authorization Act. We currently offer a money management fair and one or two workshops per semester. However, I’m really interested in your thoughts on how we can offer a full program to the students at low costs. A course in financial literacy would be the best, but I doubt that many would use their time to attend a class that is not required.

I live in a rural area of Arkansas that is very poor. Most of our students qualify as low income and are also first-generation college students. Many of them take out student loans to survive. Large percentages of them don’t make enough money to pay back these loans after they are out of school.

I decided to tackle this question because I know that many readers of The Simple Dollar are involved in situations just like Maggie. I get lots of requests to reprint articles from The Simple Dollar for classes like this, for example.

First of all, I agree with Maggie’s point that a full course in financial literacy at the community college level likely won’t attract a huge amount of interest. Most potential students are either too busy to take a class not directly related to their goals or won’t be interested in the topic – the very people who could actually use the help. I’m also going to assume from her email that her primary goal is to reach the largest number of students possible.

So what’s the solution here? My gut feeling is that a weekly seminar/meeting series, each focused on tight, individual topics, would be the best way to go. Whenever I think about how to present an idea, I break it down into three pieces: getting someone’s attention, keeping that person’s attention while you’re making your point, and making sure that the point sticks with them when they leave. So, let’s look at Maggie’s situation through each of these pieces.

Getting People’s Attention
In other words, how are you going to get people in the door to pay attention to these topics? It all comes down to the advertising and the ease of attracting people.

Make it as easy as possible to attend. Examine the schedules of people that you view as likely to attend such events if they’re free and plan accordingly. One good time to have an hour-long seminar/workshop is around lunch time, where it can be scheduled as a brown bag lunch. Another accessible time is in the early evening.

Also, you should not restrict people from attending. It is fine to have a “carrot” in place to encourage people to come back, but don’t create a situation that keeps people from attending or “punishes” people who miss a session or two. The best way to do this is to make each topic stand completely on its own, with as little reliance as possible on other topics.

Give a very obvious “hook” to get people in the door. If you’re teaching personal finance topics, the best way to do this is to directly translate the topic you’re going to present into dollars and cents. Find a way to make your lesson as tangible as possible, figure out how much money this will save people, then use that as part of the salesmanship of the session.

One great example: let’s say you’ve decided to do a session on reducing one’s utility bills. Your “hook” could be to provide everyone who attends a CFL light bulb that they can take home and install (for some more thoughts on how to make this work, see below). Then, when you advertise, you can directly state that this session includes a giveaway that will reduce their energy bill by $30. Make that the attention getter in any promotion that you do.

Make sure as many people know about it as possible. Once you’ve got that key attention getter, broadcast the news of this session as far and wide as you can, using that hook as the lead. Send out emails to any mailing lists you have saying “Want $30 more in your pocket? Attend ….” Make flyers leading with that idea. Make it very clear that anyone can attend, and include the time and location (and maybe even a map, if that’s necessary) on the flyers and emails.

Keeping Their Attention
Once you’ve got these people in the door, what can you do to keep their attention?

Make everything you say as tangible as possible. Everything you speak of should be as applicable as possible to as many people in the room as possible. Let’s say you’re doing a session on how to maximize your food dollars. Instead of speaking in intangibles, break out your own receipts and coupons. Go through the whole thing step by step – reading flyers, clipping coupons, making a meal plan, creating a shopping list – and actually do it instead of talking about it. As you’re going along, focus on meals and items that the people in the room might actually buy. Focus on simple meals that they might actually prepare at home.

Get them involved. The more audience interaction, the better. For the food lesson, ask people in the room what they’re going to have for supper tonight. Get several ideas, then use that as the basis for constructing a meal plan. When using the flyer, pick out a few foods from the flyer, then get people in the audience to name dishes they like that use hamburger (or whatever you discover in the flyer). For other sessions, convince people to bring in bill statements, credit cards, and other things that they’re willing to share. Bring in your own, too.

Focus on the big points, not the minutiae. Reduce each point you’re trying to make to as few words as possible. The rest of your talking should be focused on tangible examples. When you get lost in the minutiae of the larger points you’re trying to make, you lose the people in the crowd, too.

Sending the Message Home
You got them there, you got them interested while they were in the room, but now they’re about to leave. What can you do to make sure that they take the idea home with them.

Make sure they can take something home that encourages action. A simple bullet list of five or so direct actions they can take from the class can be incredibly useful. Don’t make it overly complex – just give enough so that they can actually do it on their own, no more. If a page is too filled with words, busy people will overlook it. If you feel the need to include lots of words, use brief headers to make sure the main five (or so) points are very clear.

Get sponsors. Another clever technique to make the class tangible is to give away something to each attendee (or to each person that participates). Of course, a good giveaway has costs. The best way to mitigate those costs is to seek out a local sponsor.

Remember the example above of giving out CFL bulbs? Try contacting the management at your local Home Depot or Lowe’s or local hardware store. Explain to them that you’re doing a class on how to save energy and suggest that they donate a number of individually packaged CFLs to the class. To each one, they could attach a small flyer for the store that also works as a dollar-off coupon on another CFL. For them, this is a great advertising promotion, as you’ll be explaining to the audience how they can save money with these bulbs and their business name will be attached right to it. For you, it’s a great way to obtain something to hand out that also serves as a tangible reminder of the lessons from the class.

Remember, personal finance is a topic that many people find tedious – or they simply don’t want to hear about it at all. The best way to overcome that is to make it appear quite easy to apply personal finance tactics in their lives – and there are a lot of subtle ways to do just that.

How do you feel about this, readers? Is this the type of event that would be interesting to you? Would you be excited if something like this appeared in your community?

When I graduated from high school – and again when I graduated from college – I received quite a few gifts from friends and family members. Most of them fell into two categories: money inserted into graduation cards, or items intended to help with my life in the near future (like a gas card or a laundry bag or a shower kit or a microwave oven).

Just a handful of gifts fell into a third category, and those were the most memorable. Great sentiments on handwritten notes. Long dinners with real conversations. Thoughtfully-given books with some suggested passages to start with. A nearly-invisible helping hand to get my career going on the right path.

To put it simply, the best graduation gifts for me were ones that were thoughtful, ones that were inspirational, and ones that actually opened doors for me.

For the most part, these gifts didn’t cost the giver very much at all in terms of money. Instead, the value of the gift was delivered via time and thoughtfulness, and that always means much more than a twenty dollar bill stuffed inside a forgettable card.

The best part is that most great graduation gifts won’t cost you much money at all. Instead, they require some thoughtfulness and some planning. Here are four things to think about as graduation season approaches.

A Thoughtful Conversation
The best way to understand what exactly a graduate is thinking about for the future is to sit down with that graduate and have a real conversation. A great way to do this is over dinner – invite that graduate to your home or take that graduate out to dinner. If that doesn’t work for you, a telephone call also works.

The key is not to bury them in advice and your own anecdotes. Instead, you should seek to get the person to talk about what they’re thinking about doing in the future. Some good questions:
+ What are you going to do after graduation?
+ Where are you going to college?
+ What are you thinking of majoring in?
+ What do you enjoy doing?
+ Do you have a job lined up, or any prospects?
+ What would you like to be doing?

Listen to what’s being said. Many students feel an urge to tell a particular story about their dreams, aspirations, and post-graduation plans that doesn’t really reflect their true story. Listen carefully and try to seek out the things that they really enjoy.

More important, give encouragement to the graduate. Tell them that they can do anything. Offer a few specific pointers, but don’t drown them in advice. Let them do most of the talking.

Don’t drown them in personal anecdotes, either. A few are fine, but the focus is on what they’re doing, not on what you did.

Your goal here should be to figure out where the graduate really wants to be going – and whether or not they’re on their way. Pay attention. Listen to what the graduate is saying. Be positive about the things they’re passionate about. Let the graduate do most of the talking. And, when you’re done, make sure you’ve taken away two or three things about the graduate’s dreams and future that are clearly true and that the graduate is clearly excited about.

A Telephone Call
Once you have that source material, look through your contacts. Do you know any people that are doing anything close to the area toward which the graduate is focusing? Call them up. Explain what’s going on. Ask for their thoughts.

If there are opportunities for the graduate, pass them along. Let the graduate know of any opportunities you discover for them. Even better, if you have the chance to make a positive case for that graduate, do so. Grease the rails for them so that those early, tentative career steps go quite easily.

Most likely, though, you’ll gather some useful insights about their direction and you might also gather an additional contact or two.

Take all of the information you discover and deliver it to the graduate. Tell them that you called an old friend of yours who’s doing that kind of work and here’s what he/she had to say. Pass along any useful contact information if you can.

In short, help the graduate (if you can) by getting their foot in the door. Every bit helps, and if you can help that graduate open a door, you’ve changed their life.

A Single Key Reflection
Taking together all you’ve learned about the graduate and where he/she is headed, spend some time thinking about the one piece of advice you’d like to give that student. Don’t just go with your first instinct – don’t be afraid, even, to jot down several ideas and think about them, but stick with just one – the real home run.

The graduate won’t remember the $20 bill you stuck in the card. But they might remember something insightful and useful that you wrote, especially if it clicks with them. That $20 will be lost in the mists of time, but a useful bit of knowledge pays dividends forever.

Surround that one piece of advice with some strong positive reinforcement. Let the graduate know that you see great potential in him/her and that you look forward to their great future.

Words like this can really have an impact. I still remember the advice and similar sentiments that people gave to me in graduation cards, but I don’t remember who gave me $10 and who didn’t a decade ago. The advice stuck with me and helped me to grow – a truly great graduation gift.

A Follow-Up
Most people limit their congratulations and help to the graduate to the days around the actual ceremony. When that graduate will probably need help, though, will come a while down the road.

Touch base with the graduate a few months after graduation and see how they’re doing. Are they still struggling with finding their place? Or have they found a happy home?

You may find that you can offer much more help early in their career than at their graduation. Encouragement can be key in the midst of early challenges. A little helping hand can be much more useful after the glow of graduation has come off and the realities of professional life are starting to appear.

If it seems potentially useful, get ahold of your contacts again and see if anything has changed. Are there any new opportunities? Pass these along to the graduate.

Here’s the big thing: graduation and entry into professional life is often a huge shock for people, but the support they get usually just comes in a burst at their graduation party. If you really want to give something with impact, give them time, both before and after graduation, and help pull a few strings for the graduate. It won’t cost you much at all – and it can make all the difference to a motivated graduate.

Good luck!

Fairly regularly on The Simple Dollar, I mention that I’m investing in 529 college savings plans for my two children. Each month, I automatically contribute $100 to each of their plans – and I’ve considered contributing more than that.

But what’s a 529? Erin writes in with a typical query:

You write all the time about saving for your kids college education in a 529. What is that? How do you do it?

Let’s dig in.

What Is a 529?
A 529 plan is simply an investment account with a few tax advantages that make it very useful for saving for higher education. To be specific, any interest or investment income earned in the account that is then used for higher education is exempt from federal taxes (and from state taxes in many locations). In some states, the contributions themselves are deductible from state taxes.

There are two types of 529 accounts: prepaid accounts and savings accounts. Prepaid accounts are used to purchase tuition “credits” at certain institutions at current rates, so, for example, you might be able to purchase a semester’s worth of tuition at East Overshoe Tech at the current rate of $10,000 a semester, but in fifteen years when your child is actually attending the school, tuition might cost $20,000 but you won’t pay a dime – you’ve already purchased that semester.

On the other hand, savings accounts are basically just investment accounts – you contribute money, it goes into the stock market or into bonds, and any gains you earn stay within the account. When the account’s beneficiary goes to college, the money can be used at any school. In other words, savings-style 529s are more flexible, but they often don’t return quite as well (since higher education tuition growth is usually greater than the stock market).

Most states have their own 529 plans with specific rules; however, many states have plans that are open to people from other states to contribute.

Another important aspect of 529 plans is that the beneficiary does not control the account – the person that opens the account controls the money. This is a great protection, as it keeps overzealous children from “cashing in” on their college savings.

How Do I Do It?
My investments go through College Savings Iowa. This offers me a number of specific benefits.

First, as an Iowa resident, my contributions to my children’s plans are deductible from state income taxes. Largely because of these contributions, we received a refund on our state taxes this year, while we had to pay in a small amount on our federal taxes.

Second, College Savings Iowa uses Vanguard to manage their investments, and Vanguard is a company I already trust with my retirement savings and other investments. The plan offers quite a few stellar investment choices – I’m currently using the “aggressive” target investing plan for both of my children, which is a low-cost collection of index funds that strive to earn large returns.

Third, the plan is tied in directly with Upromise. Once I signed up with this program, a small percentage of our credit card usage goes straight into those 529 accounts. It’s usually a small amount each month, but this money is essentially an additional free contribution to my children’s college savings plans.

How Do I Sign Up?
First, you need to decide which plan to use. Most states offer their own 529 plans, but they all vary quite a bit. You should start by seriously considering the plan in your own state, because many state plans offer income tax breaks for state residents – you can find your own state’s plan by Googling your state’s name and 529.

If your own state doesn’t offer a plan or only offers a plan you don’t like (such as a 529 that only allows prepayment of tuition to universities you don’t like), look at plans available in other states. Liz Pulliam Weston at MSN MoneyCentral has identified five great state plans, for starters.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll set up an automatic investment plan that draws whatever amount you specify each week or month from your checking account and puts it away for your children’s education (or your grandchildren’s education … or your own). It’s quite easy, and it’s a great way to get started with college savings.

When I first went to college, I was lost. I had grown up in a tiny town where virtually everyone around me had started factory jobs straight out of high school. I literally knew no one (other than my teachers) who had attended college at any level. I more or less guessed at a major based on the advice of people around me who, quite honestly, had very little idea, either. I had no idea what would lead to success in school – I figured you just went to classes and goofed off all the time.

Luckily, I found three mentors while there that turned things around for me, showing me what I needed to do to succeed, providing me with advice when I needed it, and pushing and prodding me to move forward.

My first mentor was a professor who was also my academic advisor. He took a distinct interest in me (likely because I seemed so lost, but at least I was somewhat aware of it) and helped me find my first job (in a public computer lab) and then, later, my second job (in a research lab). Over the years (even after I graduated), we kept in such close touch that I wound up being one of the speakers at his retirement ceremony. He took me under his wing as an aimless college student and gave me direction and motivation.

My second mentor was a system support specialist that was charged with “overseeing” the computer lab where I worked. We mutually helped each other out several times and, eventually, he not only introduced me to my third mentor, but he provided a lot of the motivation I needed to launch a writing career. I still swap messages with him all the time. He helped me refine my direction, find the right place to continue to grow, and provided continuous advice along the way.

My third mentor was a professor who was my direct boss for six years. He would assign me projects that were vaguely defined and would require me to really push myself and find new skills, and he dropped just enough carrots along the way to keep me growing. He encouraged me to add a second major (computer science) to complement my first (biology). As I neared graduation, he actually created a full-time position for me in his lab that lasted for two years, then he helped me transition that experience directly into a federal job. He opened the door to my career.

At the same time, though, I interacted with a lot of professors, advisors, and others who didn’t seem to click with me at all. They provided very little help along the way. Often, it was clear that they were just telling me things to get me out of their way. Sadly, I found that most college students tend to wind up with a negative perspective of professors and advisors in general because of these experiences.

How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? How can a college student find a good mentor that can help him or her on the path to a good career – and avoid the ones that provide little or no help? Here’s the game plan for doing just that.

Know what you’re passionate about. No mentor in the world can help you if you don’t bring some of your own passion to the table. If you’re not enthusiastic about anything that overlaps a potential mentor’s enthusiasm, you’ll almost never click in any significant way.

So, find what you’re passionate about. Get started on this as early as you can, so that you can use this information to select a major that best matches what fuels your fire.

Find people at the school who share your passion. The best way to start is to look for extracurricular activities that relate to that interest – and I use extracurricular in the broadest sense of the term. Join clubs. Go to public lectures. Attend every optional program and session that you can that relates to your interest.

What you’ll begin to find is that there is a consistent group of people that attend many of these events. Professors, department heads, graduate students, and strongly motivated undergraduates will be in that group, and what they all have in common is an interest in those shared topics and the energy to reach out to discover more. Somewhere in this group is a great mentor for you.

Get in the mix by asking questions. Standing in the background won’t do the trick. You need to participate in the discussion. In almost every environment, the best way to start is to ask questions. If you don’t know, ask. Listen. Ask some more.

Eventually, you’ll start finding people in this environment that you click well with. You’re getting closer to a great mentor – those people that you’re clicking with are conversational and share your passion. When you begin to identify some potential mentors, ask around about them. Do your own research, too – Google the person and see if you can find information about them.

Ask. The best approach is usually to simply ask if the person you’ve identified as a potential mentor has some time to meet with you and answer some questions. Any potential mentor worth his or her salt will happily agree.

When you meet, simply lay it out there. Talk what you’re passionate about and why you’re passionate about it and simply ask how you can get going with regards to following this passion as a career. What can you be doing now? What can you be doing in the future?

Any number of things can come from a meeting like this. There might be an opportunity for paid work or for volunteer work. The person might be able to point you towards another person or situation that might be more appropriate for you. Other times, the mentor might just be a source of good knowledge.

If you get an opportunity to prove yourself, make the most of it. Do your assigned tasks as well as you possibly can. Ask questions – but hold back on the “stupid” questions and find the answers to those yourself.

You’ll find that, if you’re passionate and quite willing to utilize that passion, a good mentor is continually willing to offer good advice, answer the questions you may have, and often open doors for you, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Good luck!

This past weekend, my wife and I were watching Clark Howard’s show on Headline News. During the program, Clark stated a canard that I’ve heard several times from personal finance “gurus” over the past couple years: instead of saving for a child’s college education, parents are better off saving for their own retirement.

Clark’s main reason was pretty simple: people can’t receive scholarships or student loans for retirement. Obviously, that’s true: my children will be able to get all kinds of assistance for their college education, while I won’t be able to get any sort of aid for retirement. Not only that, if your child does have to get into debt for college, they’ll have many, many years to earn their way out of it, whereas when the children go off to college, you won’t have too many years to keep saving for retirement.

On paper, the argument does make a lot of sense. On paper.

This equation leaves out an enormous human element. For many people – myself included – retirement isn’t the big ultimate goal. I might like to think about retiring a bit early, but my big motivation in life isn’t related to retirement at all.

My big plans right now involve guiding my children into adulthood with enough life skills and opportunities that they can basically choose to do anything they want – and run with it. In most ways, my financial choices revolve around that motivation. I started 529 accounts for my children before they were even born (starting them with myself as beneficiary, then changing it). I’m already investing in educational opportunities for them.

Yes, I’m saving for retirement. However, I could be saving substantially more for retirement if I were not directing significant money to my children’s future – and I don’t just mean college savings, either. Other opportunities, such as camps that revolve around their interests, international trips, equipment and instruments they might need, and so on are also important – and by planning for them and saving for them now, I reduce the chance that changes in my career will affect the opportunities that my children have.

Clark’s advice is correct on paper, but it leaves out one of the biggest aspects of personal finance: setting your own goals. Most of my goals revolve around my children – thus, my savings and investment choices revolve around what paints the best future for them.

The lesson here is not every “rule” of personal finance applies to every situation. Instead, you should figure out what your own goals are and then seek out advice on how to make those goals actually happen.

Good luck!

Over the last few weeks, I have been reflecting on how many members of my rather close extended family are either near high school graduation or are in college right now. They have so many great opportunities ahead of them in the next few years – and so many chances to botch things, too. Stephen, Brittany, Robert – these are some of the stupid things I did in college that I wound up regretting financially for years. In some ways, I’m still suffering the repercussions. Don’t do the same.

One of the first major articles I wrote on The Simple Dollar was a ten-part series that amounted to my personal financial biography – if you’re interested, it starts here. Reflecting back on a lifetime of financial mistakes, I always come back to the idea that my college years were when things really went off the rails for me. Those first years of financial independence, where I had no idea what I was doing with money and no sensible guidance to help me out, caused me to develop a lot of atrocious money habits. While I covered a few of them in the biography, I felt that I only really scratched the surface when it came to the mistakes that I made.

Here, then, are the seven biggest financial mis-steps of my college career. I sincerely hope that you don’t make the same ones.

1. Going in the door without a clue.
When I went to college, I not only had no idea what I wanted to study, but I had absolutely no idea what the experience would be like. The end result? I wasted a lot of time in classes that I didn’t really need. I spent time blindly involved in activities and social events that never really clicked with me. I built at least three distinctly different groups of friends during my college years – and watched them all dissolve in a blink. I failed to really get involved with anything interesting until very near the end of my college years.

What I should have done More than anything, I wish I had spent my junior and senior year in high school doing some real soul searching to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I also wish I had asked everyone I knew that had attended college for advice on the experience just so I knew what things people consistently found valuable. I didn’t do either of these things.

2. Extending my stay for two extra years.
After four years, I had actually managed to complete a degree within the years covered by my scholarship. Sounds like a perfect time to start a second one, huh? I spent two more years in school – paying out of pocket via student loans – earning a second degree.

What I should have done Again, if I had properly explored my interests early on, I would have had a much better idea as to what I should have studied in college. Similarly, I should have ignored any and all advice relating to what major you should or shouldn’t have if you want to earn a good income. Earning a good income relies much more on building diverse and marketable skills, not what you majored in – what’s actually important is that you completed a degree and learned some generally useful skills along the way.

3. Failing to take advantage of all of the non-classroom opportunities.
I spent much of my extracurricular time in college wasting time. I played piles of video games, hung out with a lot of people that I barely saw again after college, watched piles of awful movies, and thoroughly explored the outer boundaries of wasting time. While “downtime” is a healthy thing in reasonable amounts, I certainly burned through more than my fair share of it.

What I should have done I don’t entirely regret all of the time I spent involved in such frivolous activities – some total leisure time is good for everyone’s mind. However, I should have spent at least some of that time involved in activities that were simultaneously fun and also enriching in some fashion, such as seeking out interesting organizations to participate in or getting involved with volunteer projects or actually building some connections and friendships with people on some version of my own career path. I didn’t do any of that, and it was a profound misuse of my time and also of my financial investment in school.

4. Signing up for a credit card – then using it with reckless abandon.
During my second year of college, I signed up for a credit card at one of those little booths that credit card companies like to stick up on college campuses. I don’t remember exactly why I signed up – it probably seemed like a good idea at the moment and I likely got a free t-shirt out of the deal. The real problem came later – I decided to start using it a little. And, rather quickly, a little turned into a lot. By the time I left school, I had thousands in built-up credit card debt.

What I should have done Signing up for the card wouldn’t have been a huge mistake if I had a plan in place for using it. I should have simply used the card to pay for textbooks each semester, then lived off of my stipend and the money I made from a part-time job. That way, I could have built up my credit in a positive fashion and not left college with a bunch of needless consumer debt that required me to keep writing fat payment checks for years.

5. Not taking my classes with enough seriousness.
For the first few years of my college career – actually, for all the years except for my last one – I believed I could coast through things using the awful study habits I had built up during my high school years. In other words, I believed that I didn’t have to study for tests and that I could handle assignments by doing them the night before. Both assumptions were absolutely ridiculous – and my GPA suffered greatly for it. My final year’s GPA was almost a full point higher than my cumulative one – and my final year was the only one that I used healthy study and assignment habits. That GPA turned out to be a barrier against getting into graduate school in my area of interest – and it also didn’t help with my initial job hunt.

What I should have done I knew from the start that my study habits were awful, but I was able to squeak by with those habits. Instead of just squeaking by, I should have put serious effort into picking up solid habits from the start – and there were certainly opportunities for it. Simply using better classroom and study habits would have substantially raised my GPA – and likely substantially raised my short term post-college earnings and opportunities.

6. Not figuring out how to manage my money right off the bat.
For my first four years in college, I used a check cashing service to cash my paychecks from my part-time job, and I used money orders to pay bills. Seriously. I would dock myself 4% for the check cashing fee, then I’d dock myself almost another dollar for each “check” I would write. Even when I finally got a free checking account at a local bank (with free checks!), I didn’t even try to keep the account balanced at all. Instead, I mostly just relied on memory and whatever balance the ATM told me I had in the account. The end result? Lots of ATM fees and more than a few overdraft fees during those heady college days.

What I should have done I should have signed up for that free checking account on the first day of school. If I were doing things all over again, I’d sign up for something like ING’s Electric Orange so I could do most of my checking account business purely online and have any paychecks directly deposited there. That way, I would avoid almost all of the stupid fees I paid, have access to all of the information about my account all at once, and also earn some interest on that balance.

7. Living large off of my stipend and student loans.
During my first four years of school, I actually had a surplus of scholarships that enabled me to receive a small living stipend while I attended school. Yet I managed to spend all of that, all of the money I earned from my part-time work, and built up some credit card debt as well. During my final two years, I took out the largest student loans I could so that I could continue to have that “stipend” money and keep living that lifestyle.

What I should have done I should have actually attempted to live the cheap college student lifestyle. There was always tons of free entertainment available around campus, and plenty of free food if you attended group meetings. I didn’t really need all of the electronics I bought, either – most of them were scarcely used at all. Instead, my focus should have been on trying to build up some savings my first four years so that my student loans would have been lower my final two years – or, even better, that saved money could have been a good start on my post-graduation life had I been able to actually graduate in four years.

What did these mistakes add up to? When I left college, I had over $30,000 in student loan debt (unnecessary), two degrees (one of which I didn’t really use at all), several thousand in credit card debt (totally unnecessary), a subpar GPA (easily avoidable), and only a few good connections and friendships that lasted into post-college life (although the few I had turned out to be very good ones). In many ways, I’m still paying for those mistakes, many years after graduation.

Don’t let it happen to you.