College fund

You need to look up on cash value insurance vs term life and see if you really want to do it that way.

 

Well, the first question is, how does your retirement look? Keep in mind that you can get loans for college, but not for your retirement.

There is nothing more counter-intuitive than the current "need-based" financial aid system.

Maximize your success can mean unlearning most of what one thinks they might know about how to prepare financially for college.

It's a world where "saving for college" is counter-productive and where purchasing whole life insurance can actually make sense.

IMO, it's more complicated than the tax code because it starts off with your tax exposed information then adds layer after layer of further disclosure.

FAFSA is just the start. The basics for this are to really, really understand which assets are FAFSA-exposed and which are not. Generally retirement accounts are not. So skip funding that 529 at the expense of your 401k/IRA/Roth.
In Illinois you can get the full state tax deduction by putting the money in for 10 days and then pulling it back out again.

Then depending on the state and the school, you will want to understand how the state calculates eligibility.

The next big hurdle is CSS Profile. If you're not of the age where you've had to get a colonoscopy or have never been IRS audited, then reading the material related to the CSS Profile will be an eye-opener. Reading the CSS Profile instructions is like a walk down memory lane of scamology. You can really tell what people have tried in the past to shield income/assets by the question the CSS Profile asks. Like whether your minor children own houses? YIKES! When I was a kid I was lucky if I owned a bike. But people had been shielding their assets by putting their houses in their kids' names.

After all of that are the school-specific forms. Why school specific? Because the schools know it takes a while for FAFSA and the CSS Profile to catch up on the latest evasive innovations.

The #1 thing to keep in mind is to take a long-term, holistic approach. Look at how many years you will have dependents in college and look to minimize your cumulative exposure over that entire period, not just any one year in particular.

Also, what can help you on the FAFSA can come back to bite you on the CSS Profile. So lay out all the sets of rules you will fall under and see what the combined wiggle room is.

Finally, keep in mind that it's a dynamic game. The rules for each of the layers can and do change from year to year.

Pugs