Complete College Planning Solutions now appearing in MoneyMatters February 15, 2012
Ian Welham on how he ended up in MoneyMattersNJ.com
I sometimes kid or tease accountants and CPA’s for myopic thinking.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against CPA’s. Most tend to be consummate professionals, Plus, hey, I was trained as one myself – except in the U.K., the professional designation is Chartered Financial Accountants instead of Certified Public Accountants.
What I find exasperating is when an accountant can’t see the forest through the trees. For example, when she can’t see the merit of paying $500 extra in taxes today in order to reduce a college bill by $4,000 tomorrow. Or when he advises a parent of a 16-yearold to put money in a 529 Plan. That kind of stuff drives me Looney-Tunes.
So given my penchant for tweaking accountants’ noses, you can enter this in the ledger under ‘Life’s Wonderful Ironies’ …
One of our college planning articles was recently added to the MoneyMattersNJ.com website.
MoneyMattersNJ.com is a site started and facilitated by the New Jersey Society of CPAs. As such, you might expect it to be a real snore fest. Actually, the opposite is true. It’s quite a varied and interesting site. Not to mention useful. All sorts of topics are covered, from how to pay down debt to how to appeal your real estate taxes to helpful tips on retirement relocation. There’s a ton of free information available, and they break it down into life stages to make navigation easy.
Our article is in the “Parents and Children” section, under the title, The 4 Most Common Mistakes Parents Make That Cost Them College Financial Aid (and How to Avoid Them). Here’s the link: http://www.moneymattersnj.com/story.cfm?SID=15430
If you read it, let me know what you think. And if you like the website, hug an accountant.
Posted Under: College Funding
