Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for November 17th, 2006

More than a year ago, I talked about the high price of sending my daughters to my Alma Mater (the University of Waterloo), but let’s revisit it (and also given that the data is about 2 years out of date now).

If it is going to cost me $8000.00 per 4 month term, which will add up to almost $65000 for a full degree. Holy smokes, now yes this is not the cost that places like Dartmouth charge (evidently that is the cost of 1 year of schooling there, and that is in American Cash too), but still this is a large amount of money.

So how do you combat these high prices? No there is no discount program, or anything like that (but you might get some PC Points if you paid with your credit card).

Steps to take:

1. Make sure you have those RESPs cooking. This is free money from the government, take advantage of it, please!
2. Co-op, it is not for every student, but a lot of kids I went to school with paid their way through school with their co-op jobs.
3. Scholarships, you’d be surprised how many of those are out there, and there are some that go unclaimed, look into it. A lot of them are not mark based, they are need based, McDonald’s has a scholarship, Tim Horton’s does, as does the Girl Guides!
4. Bursaries and Government loans. Well, this is the last choice, but if you need these, then get them.

The bottom line is a post secondary education is that important, maybe you need to put yourself in a bit of a financial bind, but you are investing in either yourself, or your kids, which is usually a good investment (IMHO) . — C8j