U Promise

U Promise Investing for College

The cost of higher education is on the increase and it does not appear to be leveling off any time in the future. It is a great idea to begin investing in your child's post-secondary education as soon as imaginable. College tuition can be a nightmare for allot of middle income families. Middle income families frequently make too much cash to get student loans and state grants but allot of of these same families cannot manage to pay for all of their child's college tuition. Investing in your child's schooling early on is a real way to insure that there may be some funds for the big college bills.

Even those of us who are from families that qualified for student loans often discover ourselves in way well over our heads in big debt six months after we graduate. My parents never think about investing in my college education. I was one of five kids and it was a struggle just to pay the bills. There was no cash left over to invest. I simply qualified for student loans but I at no time thought that I would still be paying on them fourteen years later with no end to the payments in the near future.

I chose to start investing in my daughter's education once I found out I was pregnant. I started an account with U Promise, a web site that is associated with a number of retail and grocery stores as well as products. I assigned our credit cards to the account. I added our grocery discount cards to the account and I started to  purchase products affiliated with U Promise. My daughter had a smaller college fund before she had a name. After she was born, I put the U Promise account in her name.

I also started a savings account as a way of investing in my daughter's college tuition. This traditional method of investing gains a small return in interest, but it is safe and steady. I also plan to use the investing strategy to encourage my daughter to develop a work ethic. She will earn money from chores and add part of the money to her savings account.

I do favor using a savings account for investing over a program like U Promise. It is simple to make unnecessary purchases and it is easy to buy more costly products just to get a few cents into your U Promise account. For instance, I can buy Tide at my local discount store for about half the price that it is offered at my neighbouring grocery store. I have to choose between paying cash at the discount store with no credit on the education investment account and buying the product at the grocery store for credit.

I figure that Tide offers Now only one percent of the cost to the account. If I spent twenty dollars on the item, I only am investing two cents. I can save between five and ten dollars on that identical cost by going to the discount store. I would rather put the additional money directly into my daughter's savings account. With a little thought and a lot of planning, I wish that my daughter has a worry free college career.