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College Tuition Estimator Online Calculator
By JLP | May 26, 2006
The AllFinancialMatters College Tuition Estimator calculator just went live. I would appreciate it if you guys would try it out and give me some feedback. As far as data entry goes, it should be pretty straight-forward.
Topics: Calculators, College Funding | 9 Comments »
May 27th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I found your College Tuition Estimator to be easy to use and understand. It is a simple calculator that will be convenient to use for making a general estimate of college costs. However, I do think you might want to consider a name change because I believe you are estimating more than just tuition costs. I don’t know of any public universities that charge $12,500/year for tuition. I believe this is an estimate of tuition, room, and board. I have looked at a number of college cost calculators and they all ask for an expected rate of return on your investment. My college investments are in age-based 529 portfolios that invest in more conservative assets as my children age. Does a single estimate of investment return work as well in this situation as providing multiple estimates of return over time?
May 28th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
I think your college cost estimator is very easy to use. Regarding Drew’s comment on $12,500/year for tuition: you may not have realised that the tuition cost is a field you can change in the calculator to suit your situation. I did, and it worked fine.
May 28th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
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May 28th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
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May 30th, 2006 at 12:41 am
[...] JLP presents College Tuition Estimator Online Calculator posted at AllThingsFinancial. [...]
May 31st, 2006 at 6:21 am
question-I have a single 256 account set up that will be drawn on by both children for their educations. They are 5 and 3. So when I put the savings part in, what would you think would be the best way to break up the amount currently in savings? (I assume that I should run the calcualtions separately for each child)
May 31st, 2006 at 11:26 am
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June 2nd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
JLP – very nice! I’ll very likely be featuring the tools you’ve developed sometime in the very near future at Political Calculations.
Drew – your point about 529 age-based investing is a good one, but the execution of which would require some fairly complicated programming. As an alternative, I would simply recommend using a lower rate of return that might better reflect the average over the whole term of the investment.
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 am
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