Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for May 17th, 2005

I remembered that my Alma Mater had posted somewhere on it’s web site a helpful budgeting (but not debt reduction) tool for Students coming to the University, and I had forgotten how much was there, and such, so I figured I’d look the tool up (here is a link to it). Well, after I got some smelling salts I tried to figure out just how far OFF my calculations are for my eldest daughter (who most likely starts University somewhere in the next 3 years). Let’s just review the numbers posted:

• A student in the Co-Op program living on campus would pay $10K-12K
• Living Off-campus they’d pay $7K-$8K
• If they lived at home $4K-6K

Well that isn’t too bad, wait a minute, that is only for 4 months!!!! The total debt of this is then $8K * 8 terms = $64K worth of debt or cost for this education.

Where are those smelling salts again? What can I do?

1. Make sure I use the RESP that I have set up. This gives me some extra money. I’ll post something about that in a day or two.
2. Lots of bursaries and scholarships are out there, look around.
3. Lobby your MP and MPP about the cost of Post Secondary Education!

If you have children that are very young, start saving NOW, because how much this will cost in 16 years is anybody’s guess (did I mention my new son who will be looking at universities then?).

START SAVING NOW!!!!!!! (or start planning debt reduction for aftewards) -c8j