Put four kids though college: CHECK!

We have been paying college tuition for anywhere from one to three children for TEN YEARS SOLID and this June all four of our kids will be college graduates!

I just clicked SEND on the very last tuition payment we’ll ever make as parents!  This has not been an easy ride – for them or for us – but it has been well worth it.   A college education is an accomplishment that no one can ever take away and I am so proud of each of our kids for the hard work and dedication they put into that education.

Hats off to:

Elisabeth, Cal Berkeley, 2006

Peter, Washington State University, 2010

Aleks, University of Washington, 2012

Kat, University of Washington, 2012

Cue the Twilight Zone music!

We bought a lottery ticket this week -- which we rarely do.

As he was leaving for work this morning, Tom mentioned that we'd forgotten to check last night to see if we're winners. At the same moment, he picked something off the floor that looked like a wayward scrap of paper.

It was this:

Neither of us have any idea where it came from.  We went out for dinner at the Mongolian BBQ last night and read the fortunes in the four cookies, but they were boring and normal and we left them on our plates!  Where did THIS fortune come from and why was it on our otherwise tidy floor?!

And why, oh why, is the picture posting upside down when it’s right side up on my computer?  Even when I flip it upside-down on my computer to “give in” to the bizarreness, it STILL posts upside-down!

HUH?!

We haven't checked the ticket yet... will do that tonight.

C'mon! Don't be silly! We don't believe in this stuff!! (Do we...?!?!)

Good riddance, Bank of America!

I became a Bank of America customer in 1979.  In 2012, I will be leaving in disgust.

Until last year, we never paid regular fees for any of our accounts or any regular transactions with Bank of America.  Things whirred along nicely, just as one would expect of their bank. 

Then, the bank started crapping on us.  “Hey, thanks for being loyal customers of 30+ years.  Here are a few new fees for you!”  It seemed that any time our money came or went, there was a fee associated with it.  Yeah, that $5 debit card fee felt like the last straw, but I was too busy then to go through the hassle (and it is such a hassle!) to change banks.

Then B of A revised their website and somehow in that process, they lost or Visa account.  Oh, we still had it, but it didn’t show up online.  Easy fix, right?  Nooooo – it took me SIX hours of waiting on the phone four different times over six weeks to get that resolved.

Grrrrrr! 

That experience should have kicked me into high gear toward dumping B of A, but yeah, regular life got in the way.  And by that I mean that I was still just too lazy to go through the major hassle of moving all our accounts, changing all our auto-pays and direct deposits, and finessing the timing to go through the whole painful process.

THEN, yesterday…

I get an e-mail alert from Bank of America that Aleks had overdrawn his savings account.  (Yes, I’m connected to the kids’ accounts while they’re still in school.)  Overdrawn his savings account?  The mandatory savings account that we had to open when we opened student checking accounts for the kids?  The savings account he never touches?  How could he be overdrawn?

I called the bank.  “Yes, ma’am.  Yes, there is now a $5 fee for those savings accounts.”  (Yes, the mandatory savings accounts tied to checking accounts…)

“HUH?  I was never told that!” I complained.

“It has been indicted at the end of your monthly statement since August,” I was told.

“I went paperless in August!”

“Well, ma’am, it’s on the paperless statement too.”  Guess it’s my bad for not scrolling to the end of my online statements and reading the fine print.

Eye roll.

So… funny thing – as of yesterday, I was “allowed” to close those associated savings accounts.  Which I did.

And then I got in the car and high-tailed it to our local BECA office to open a multitude of accounts. 

I was seen immediately – though the account manager told me that I was lucky; in November and December, hundreds of people who’d been screwed over by a variety of big banks waited patiently for hours to open BECU accounts.

Within an hour, I had opened checking, savings, Visa, a LOC loan, and a money market account with BECU.  After leaving the credit union, I received calls throughout the afternoon from the account manager keeping me apprised on the results of my credit check (suckas, Bank of America, you guys lost a good customer!), reminding me what items and actions were still needed, and just letting us know how things were progressing.

Yes, it will be a pain in the butt to make this change. I’ll be busy notifying all our merchants of the change and trying to time the process just right so that… well, so that we don’t incur any FEES from Bank of America.

Good riddance, Bank of America!  You could have kept these customers of 30+ years if you wanted to.  You obviously didn’t want to.

If it was never my money to begin with, did it really slip from my grasp?

We’ve been paying college tuition for almost TEN solid years now – sometimes for as many as three kids at once.  The college accounts dried up long ago and now it’s a matter of fretting big time when Aleks’ and Kat’s tuition statements come in, just hoping that we can squeak by every three months with enough saved to pay that quarter’s tuition and room and board. 

I woke up yesterday in a bit of a panic, knowing that UW tuition for winter quarter (Aleks’ and Kat’s next-to-last quarter – and our next-to-last EVER college tuition payment!) is due in a few short weeks and wondering how tight the situation really was.

I sleepily walked across the hall from our bedroom to my office, fired up the computer, and checked the college account balance.  I was hoping that we had at least the coupla thousand necessary for January tuition, knowing that I’d already paid Aleks’ fraternity bill and Kat’s January rent had been paid.

Staring back at me was a number that made NO sense whatsoever in my pre-coffeed state: the account had well over $9,000 in it!  I refreshed my browser (my default first troubleshooting action), then exited and re-entered the bank’s site.

Yup.  Well over nine grand!

This made no sense whatsoever.  We certainly didn’t put those extra thousands of dollars into the account.  So where did all that money come from?  I had no idea.

For more than a split second, I pondered how nice it would be to OWN that money, to pay Aleks’ and Kat’s last two quarters of college expenses stress-free, to breathe.  To…

Oh, damn!  I can’t keep the money!  It’s not ours to keep.

I started digging around my online banking account and found this:

It was a deposit slip for $8,636.13 with our college account number handwritten clearly on the bottom.  It also contained the name and  phone number of the person who deposited it – presumably into her own account.

I had no choice but to dial the number on the slip.  I mean, there it was, staring me in the face!  And there was a name to go with it! 

Roslyn. 

Roslyn who was probably wondering where in the world her big deposit was.

Of course I wanted to do the right thing, and of course I wanted the good feeling that goes along with doing the right thing.  There was never any doubt that I’d remedy all this.  And there was never any doubt that if I didn’t the bank eventually would.

But damn -- eight thousand dollars sure would have been nice!

I called Roslyn and explained to her what had happened.  She sounded stunned.  As it turns out, she had made the deposit (in the bank branch, it turned out, where the teller mistakenly wrote my account number on the slip instead of hers, omitting just one digit) and she hadn’t given it another thought after she left the bank, confident that the money was in her account.  As we talked, she checked her account online and realized that the funds hadn’t made it to her account after all!

I assured her that I’d take care of it with the bank, then spent the next (grrrr!) 85 minutes on the phone and on hold with Bank of America.  Had I not already made a personal connection with Roslyn, I just might have hung up, furious that the bank was making it so hard to simply do the right thing!

Roslyn now has her money and our college bank account is back to “sleepless” levels.  But I feel better.  And I KNOW Roslyn feels better!

I think I’ll go buy a lottery ticket.

Cash for a Cottage!

I joined a class action lawsuit against AOL years ago. It seems that the volunteer "Community Advisors" (I was their childbirth and doula advisor) way back when should have actually been paid. 

I'd forgotten all about the lawsuit until a nice little check (just barely enough to pay for our lodging in Hawaii this November) arrived in the mail yesterday.

Mahalo, AOL!  I love surprises like this!

FAFSA wants YOU to be on time, but it is BEHIND the times!!

I just had this conversation with a customer service agent at the “FAFSA on the Web Customer Service Live Help”:

New party ('Carol ') has joined the session:
Welcome to FAFSA on the Web Customer Service Live Help!
system: agent will be with you shortly ...

New party ('Edgar Marquez') has joined the session:
Edgar Marquez: Thank you for contacting the Federal Student Aid Information Center.  How may I help you today?

Carol: Hi!  I'm encountering a "browser not supported" on both Firefox and IE. This is a new PC with Win 7, bought last week...

Edgar Marquez: that is the problem Windows 7 is not compatible with our system, you have to use XP or Vista.

Carol: Seriously??  I don't have XP or Vista... as, I assume, many students don't.

Carol : When will Win 7 be supported?

Edgar Marquez: that I don't know, in your case you will need to find another computer with XP or Vista, you can go to a public library or your college.

Edgar Marquez: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Carol: No thanks.

Edgar Marquez: Thank you for contacting the Federal Student Aid Information Center. Please contact us again if you have further questions. Our hours are Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to midnight (eastern), Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Party ('Edgar Marquez') has left the session.
Party ('Carol ') has left the session.
Live Help was finished

Guess I’ll go dig up one of those old PCs I just put in the garage to sell at our next yard sale. 

Wow – I am just floored.

Dear Mr. President

Please find below my suggestion for
fixing America's economy.

Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the "Patriotic Retirement Plan":  

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job
openings. Unemployment fixed. 

2) They MUST buy a new American CAR.
Forty million cars ordered. Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage. Housing Crisis fixed.  

  

It can't get any easier than that!

Dear Bank of America:

I was doing some online banking last weekend when I noticed that one of my kids’ student accounts was significantly overdrawn. 

(No, I won’t say which kid.  Yes, I’m protecting the guilty.  And yes, some of our kids’ bank accounts are connected to ours so we can easily transfer money for things like textbooks.) 

By “significant” I mean six separate NSF (non-sufficient funds) fees of $35 each, over a period of less than a week.  That’s $210 in fees for a kid making just pennies more than minimum wage – a kid who’s attempting to contribute to college expenses, knowing that his/her parents are doing all they can, but that having three kids in college simultaneously and one parent unemployed is difficult, at best. 

Granted, it is my adult child’s fault that s/he didn’t keep an eagle eye on the bank account… and granted, bank fees are a necessary evil and meant to sting.  But really?  $210 in a week?  Ridiculous!

When I called the bank and inquired about fees on a student account, I was told that one solution is to have the student (who, remember, barely earns minimum wage and only works during school breaks) apply for a credit card. 

A credit card?  At 24% interest?  For a non-employed student?  “Sure,” she insisted.  “It’s a good way to avoid those pesky fees” because the money is transferred right from the credit card account to cover the shortage.

Wait a minute!  Now the non-employed student has a credit card bill – with interest – and no way to pay it off! (Does this remind you just a little of banks making home loans to people who didn’t have the means to pay them off?!) 

This is a good idea, HOW?

Ohhhh, it’s a good idea for the bank because now they can collect interest on the charged amount and fees when said student can’t pay the bill!  I seeeee!

NOT.

I’m no whiz with numbers and I’m no economist or financial advisor, but how’s this for an idea:

How about you (Bank of America!) TEXT my kid when s/he comes dangerously close to overdrawing?  The cell phone never leaves my kid’s pocket/purse and texts are part of his/her life anyway, as are ways to swiftly rectify the problem via online or phone banking.  How’s THAT for an idea, Bank of America?  Everything else is automated – why not automate a program like this? You know the technology exists and would be easy to implement, so what’s stopping you?

I know you’d be out gazillions of dollars in fees.  I know you’d probably not be opening that credit card account that will likely be ignored – or worse, abused -- when money is tight.  I know this isn’t PROFITABLE in the short term.

But it’s profitable in the long run.  Remember customer service?  Well, this is a service to a customer you probably want to keep, because at some point s/he’ll have to put that college education-enhanced income somewhere and I’d think you’d want it to be with your bank.

Anyone with me on this?  Let’s start a movement!  (But not this week because Seattle is suffering through an unprecedented heat wave and… well, I can’t move.)

Where'd Everyone GO?!

Is it just me, or have you noticed this void of commerce around you too?

This used to be the area's K-Mart.  This parking lot was usually filled with cars, and people would be coming and going at all hours.

Now? Not so much.  In fact, not at all.

This is the Mongolian Grill restaurant in our town.  It's our favorite local restaurant and we go there often -- though less often lately, both due to my injury and to the economy.  It's not unusual to have to wait for a table, even on a weeknight.  

But last night at 7:30, the place was a ghost town: 

How has the changing economy affected things in your town?

Would the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?

Last week Microsoft announced their first lay-offs ever -- 5,000 of them.

And today Seattle got a double whammy.  Boeing announced a lay-off of 10,000 workers...

...and Starbucks announced that they'd be laying off 6,700 workers.

It seems like everyone in Seattle knows someone who's lost a job in the past few weeks.  People are scared because one person laid off from these major Seattle companies impact quite a few other jobs in the region -- from construction to restaurants to contracting agencies and beyond. 

How is your job?  Are you feeling this (relatively) sudden regional pinch?

Shocker!

This came in the mail today. (And it doesn't even cover yesterday's ER visit or the surgeon!)  I have insurance, thank goodness, but this is a shocker nonetheless! 

Somehow this gives a whole new meaning to "healthcare crisis"!

When our 401K and IRA statements came in the mail last week, I barely peeked into the envelopes and then quickly looked away in disgust.  But we expected that shocker -- and we have plenty of company in that dismal situation.

Excuse me while I check my insurance policy's stop-loss.

Seriously, Mr. Auto Execs! You Take Private Jets to Washington to Plea "Broke!"?

Now this really pisses me off! The $60,000 that it cost for the three big auto executives to fly to Washington (20K each) to beg the taxpayers for bail-out money could have saved the jobs of a couple of workers at their plants -- yet they don't seem to grasp the irony of their actions!



Yeah, I'd like to bailed out too. We've had a few unexpected car repair bills lately and the expenses of three kids suddenly in college have been treacherous on our finances, so our Visa bill is higher than it's ever been and that scares the bejeezers outta me (especially in this economy) so hey, can I be bailed out too?

Of course not. Only big banks and auto companies get to be bailed out -- by taxpayers like me, who will still have my own debt to deal with once we've bailed the high-wheelers out of their woes! Maybe the banks shouldn't have made such risky loans and maybe GM should have put some effort into making more energy-efficient cars -- and yeah, maybe we should have killed ourselves to put MORE money into our kids' college accounts every month for the past 20 years (oh, wait, that'd be practically gone now, too).

But really, if anyone needs to see some of that 700 gazillion billion dollars now, it's average taxpayers like us, who have been careful with money, who have saved when we could and who have paid our bills -- and yet, who are struggling now in spite of our efforts.

Something is very wrong when, as a taxpayer, I'm being called on to help bail out blind American banks and automakers with money I don't have because the American economy is in crisis largely due to the actions of blind and stupid industries -- and their blind and stupid, private jet-flying executives!

Things That Make Me Go "HUH?!" and Things That Make Me Cry

Things that make me go "huh?!":
And things that make me cry: we've been saving money for our kids' college educations for 20 years and in the past year we transferred all the funds for all the kids into 529 plans. ALL four kids are in college now. All four 529 accounts are based in the stock market and have taken huge hits.

I just don't know how to break it to them...

My Proposal for How to Fix This Financial Crisis

Instead of giving $700 billion dollars to Wall Street, why not divide that amount by the total number of taxpayers in the US so they can pay off mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, etc.?

If my debts were paid down by $13,000 - $20,000 (the two numbers I've heard as how $700 billion divides into the number of US taxpayers), I'd be WAY more willing to pump my (now much more discretionary) money into the economy!

Easy Money!

I just made $200 for doing nothing!

A few weeks ago I got a call from a research group, asking me if I was willing to participate in a market research study around stocks and investments. I told the caller that they must have reached the wrong person because I unfortunately know very little about such matters, just crossing my fingers that my Roth IRA and 401 K that I set up once upon a time are doing OK.

(Ha! Now?!)

"On the contrary," the caller assured me, "Ignorant people like you are exactly the people we want to talk to!" (OK, those quotation marks are misplaced. I'm sure she didn't say that; I just heard that.)

We chatted for a while and the caller asked me all kinds of questions and then congratulated me, saying that I "passed" the screening and would I be interested in coming to Seattle to participate in a focus group that would last two hours on the evening of October 7th? Just for offering my opinions (and ignorance?!) about investment strategies and companies, I'd receive $200 in cold, hard cash.

These are tough economic times... count me in!

I hardly remember driving into Seattle because I was listening to the presidential debate as I drove (McCain actually did fairly well, which would have concerned me had Palin not proven herself to be so poisonous), so I was there before I knew it, even in time to grab a latte at Starbucks.

I filled out the requisite paperwork and waited. Then the moderator called the names of most of the people waiting in the room with me and asked them to head into a nearby meeting room. Just one gentleman and I were not called. The moderator then announced to us that they routinely over-book the focus groups and we were randomly chosen NOT to participate and were free to go -- but first, here's your $200 and hey, grab a sandwich and a soft drink.

So I headed home, $200, a sandwich, and a root beer richer -- which is a good thing because... well, these are tough economic times!

High Hopes

Tom and I, as completely different as we are, happen to both be Sagittarians -- though at completely different ends of the spectrum, with my birthday on 11/29 and his on 12/20. Neither of us normally put much stock into our horoscope, though we often read it for the sheer entertainment value.

Today our horoscope said this:

So after dinner we went out and did this:

As we drove the half mile home from Safeway, we discussed how we'd spend the loot if we won, a conversation that was worth every penny the $6 we paid for the tickets. First we'd pay for our kids' college educations -- all of it instead of fretting about it quarter by quarter and semester by semester. Then we'd set aside some money so the kids could buy houses... but because we wouldn't want to spoil them (heaven forbid!), it'd likely be some sort of matching-funds deal. Then we'd share with our siblings and parents -- from fun stuff like cars to huge family vacations and college educations for nieces and nephews. Then we'd each give two weeks notice at our jobs, but we'd continue to show up every day of those two weeks just to do fun stuff with our staffs, like take our co-workers to fancy lunches and buy them tickets to cool local events. Then...

...then we drove into our driveway and I headed to my office to get to work.

Four Kids in College: The Financial Stuff

I spend a huge amount of time fretting over how to pay for our kids' college educations. This started six years ago, when Elisabeth headed to Cal as an out-of-state student (which killed me because her dorm was literally a stone's throw from where I grew up). Back then, our attitude was we'll find a way. We even told the kids that they could apply to any school they wanted, and if they were accepted, well -- we'd find a way.

Elisabeth applied to Stanford and can I just say, thank goodness she didn't get in! Unless you're inordinately wealthy, $60,000 per year just doesn't come easy. (I cracked up when I got a letter from Stanford saying, essentially, "sorry 'bout that... but you're still our bestest alum friend and you'll still send us money, riiiiight?")

But even Cal was crazy expensive, since we paid out-of-state tuition. And the cost of Elisabeth's education, from when she started in 2002 to when she graduated in 2206, almost DOUBLED -- to 40+K per year! Believe me, there were many sleepless nights. (Fortunately, Elisabeth took out massive loans -- and really fortunately she's already paid them all off!)

So now we have three kids starting college in the fall. No wait -- FOUR. Elisabeth is starting school too -- graduate school -- but our rule is that we will assist with undergrad education, but graduate school is up the kids themselves.

As you can imagine, there are still (again) many sleepless nights because even though we pretty much limited them to in-state schools (unless they wanted to incur the extra cost themselves), two of those schools will cost over $20,000 per year. Ouch.

With me being unemployed during most of last year and Tom having switched careers a few years ago and taking a huge pay cut in the process, and with three dependent kids going to college, you'd think that we'd have gotten massive financial aid, wouldn't you? But can you believe it, not one of the kids got a PENNY in federal financial aid! Not one cent. I was absolutely floored and hugely disappointed. They got offers of small student loans through the universities themselves, but not one penny of federal financial aid for middle class a family with three kids in college. Something's wrong, don'tcha think?

Like a lot of well-meaning parents, we set up college accounts years ago for the kids when they were little. We didn't add to them on a regular basis through payroll deduction or regular contributions because frankly, we couldn't afford to. But we did contribute to them on quite a few sporadic occasions when we came into money, leaving each of the kids with a little over 20K in his/her college account. Believe me, it felt like a lot for many years while we were relatively oblivious to the sky-rocketing cost of college. Of course now we realize that it's barely enough for one year at a state school!

My choice now is to panic consistently (which I've done) or to take things one year at a time, which is hard because I know what's coming, but is really the only choice right now. Next year is taken care of for all the kids because that's how long it will probably take for them to blow through the money in their accounts. Except Kat, who is wisely going to a community college but living near a university. Her first two years of tuition, like Peter's first two years, will be substantially less than Aleks' at UW or Elisabeth's at UC Berkeley. The upside to that for Kat and Peter is that they'll owe less money in student loans upon graduation.

We always assumed that the kids could take out student loans, but with the financial crisis hitting lending institutions so hard these days, that looks like it's not a likelihood unless we co-sign, which our financial adviser has suggested we DON'T do "times three." And there's always home equity loans, but how scary is that?! Apparently lots of parents are opting for that route though; when I was at the bank last week shuffling college accounts from the 529 savings to the more liquid checking accounts, the loan officer told me that they're being inundated this month with panicky parents who are taking out fast home equity loans. As much as that option makes me cringe, it might be what we find ourselves doing a year from now.

And of course there's the "just grin and bear it" approach, in which we basically pay at least twice as much per month for college expenses as we pay on our mortgage. That approach requires us to forgo dinners out, entertainment, trips, etc., and live totally on the cheap, putting our monthly incomes only toward our kids' college educations -- which I might be happy to do if they, themselves had already tried and exhausted all avenues themselves.

Which brings us to scholarships. Oh man, don't get me started! Getting the kids to apply for scholarships has been as hard as getting them to floss or clean their rooms or, heaven forbid, hang up their towels! No, harder! They truly believe that they won't get a penny in scholarships because they're not members of specific groups like the Arabian Welders Association or Children of Icelandic Gypsies, so they don't even try. It kills me and is a source of great turmoil and pissiness on my part. Because all the available scholarships -- I repeat for my kids' sake: all the available scholarships! -- can be overwhelming, I have everything come in to my in-box and I send appropriate scholarship announcements onto the appropriate kid. Nursing scholarships to Kat, International Relations scholarships to Aleks... But have they applied for any? Noooooo! OK, maybe one. But it's pulling teeth to get them to apply for more. Yes, I've made it clear that the more "free" money they can find now, the less money they have to pay back later in loans. But I swear, they're not wrapping their heads around that; they just don't get it.

My heart races and my palms sweat just thinking about scholarships and why they're not applying for more of them, so I can't talk about that anymore. And yes, advice is welcome on that front, but I feel like I've tried everything, including incentives ("we'll give you 20% of any scholarships you get") and consequences ("we won't co-sign for loans, so you better get scholarships"). So far nothing has worked.

I really think there's a general inability for college-age kids (and not just ours) to wrap their heads around what it take financially to get through college for middle class Americans. If we were really poor or really rich, none of this would be an issue.

So right now I'm trying to spend more time being excited about our kids' new independence and less time fretting about how their college educations will be paid for. Chances are, we will be looking at a large home equity loan next year. And chances are that Aleks, especially, will need to take a year out and work to pay for his last two years -- something he definitely can't even fathom right now, when all he's thinking about is rush week at his new frat and the excitement of his classes.

My only option now is to take this whole adventure a day, month, and year at a time and to have confidence that one thing we did instill in our kids is the importance and the value of a college education and to believe that achieving that goal is something that they care about enough to make it happen, with our help or without it.

Word of Advice if You're Saving for Kids' College Educations

Do NOT invest in custodial accounts (UTMA/UGMA)! These are accounts that are in your child's name, with his/her social security number, and which list you as the custodian until your child reaches 18 (21 in some states).

Years ago, my parents, with the very best of intentions, set up custodial college accounts for our kids. It seemed to be the right way to go at the time because the account was taxed at the kid's rate, not the parents' -- or not taxed at all in some cases. We tried to contribute to those accounts on a regular basis and, although each kid's account will only pay for a year (at best) of the average university education, we felt good knowing that we'd at least done something toward helping them pay for college.

We did something, all right. We set up their college savings in a way that will hugely hinder their ability to qualify for financial aid -- financial aid that is desperately needed, not only because I'm unemployed, but because we'll have three kids in college next year! (Four including Elisabeth, but she's pretty much on her own for grad school.)

Because the accounts are in the kids' names, and because the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) looks at the student's money before the parents' money and requires the student to contribute a higher percentage of his or her savings than the parent is required to contribute (30% or more of student savings vs. 6% of parent savings), we all... well, we're kinda screwed.

We went to a seminar about paying for college last week at the kids' high school, which is where we discovered this jaw-dropping news. Afterwards I talked to the presenter, who was from a financial consulting company, and she suggested that I "clean up" those accounts. Hmmmm... I wonder what that means.

Of course I won't do anything illegal. Duh. But geeeze -- now I feel like someone just slipped me a message from the folds of a trenchcoat! All we want to do is help our kids pay for college, f'rgoodnesssake, and now I need to "clean up" the money we saved for them for that express purpose? Since they're all 18 and the money is now officially theirs, I guess they could "give" it to us and we put it into our account. Then it's ours and falls under the 6% rule, right?

I am losing sleep over this big time and I want to do the right thing -- for our kids as well as in the eyes of the government. It's money we put aside for them for their college educations, so why does it feel like if we touch it to try to protect their ability to pay for college, we're doing something bad?!

Irony of ironies, I recently landed a freelance writing gig in which I write about exactly this topic. Fortunately, what the company (an online college financing company) wants are monthly doses of honest, real stories from honest, real people who are struggling to put their kids through college. I have a feeling this month's contribution will be a doozy!