The True Cost of College

Before I got sucked into writing about colleges — for three college blogs no less! — I spent most of my time in front of my Mac writing personal finance stories. (This blog, by the way, started out as a personal finance blog more than three years ago.) Since the mid 1990s, I’ve written countless investing stories for such national publications and outlets as Business Week, USA Today, AARP, Money Magazine, MSN Money, New York Times and Consumer Reports.

I wrote three personal finance books and during this period I also contributed many articles for magazines geared towards financial advisors and other financial professionals. And, yes, I’m going to explain why I’m sharing all this.

I was recently asked to write a monthly college column for Registered Rep, a magazine devoted to stockbrokers. What I wrote in my second column for this magazine would be helpful to any parents with teenagers who visit my blog.

In the following article, I explain why college costs are misleading and I share a resource that you can use to better determine what a college is going to cost your child or client. Here is the article:

The True Cost of College

One more thing: Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend, including my niece Erin, who told her parents on Monday that she was going to get married today. Yikes! Through sheer luck, my daughter Caitlin, who is driving across country to get back to college, is in St. Louis today and she’s going to be the wedding photographer. Good luck Erin and Joe!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and a new eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College. She also blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.


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