Connecticut Real Estate & Mortgage Resources

Last month my firm began offering college planning services to help parents of high school students pay for rising cost of college.  As I began talking to parents about their financial plan to pay for the cost of college most mentioned using home equity to help out the first year or so and then loading their child up with student loan debt.  While I personally believe that children should have some type of responsibility in their own education in the form of some debt I don’t believe that giving a 18 year old child $100,000 in debt is the kind of welcome to the real world that they should get. 

So let’s break it down and look at both parts of the solution that I reccomend to my clients. To start I recognize and have personally recommended using home equity as a viable strategy for paying for college, but there are some side effects that can have a big negative impact on the financial aid that you may qualify for.  When you take out a lump sum of cash out of the equity of your home this increases your cash assets that are available to spend on college costs when you fill out the financial aid forms such as the FAFSA or Profile forms.  I know what you are thinking, so the answer is no. No, it does not matter if you are planning to use it for college or not.  The fact is that you have cash in hand and the government thinks that you should be using that to defray the cost of your childs college.  However, there is a solution that will allow you to take out a lump sum of cash and use it to pay for college without decreasing the amount of free money you qualify for. 

I will be giving you the details over the next couple of days…..

If you need help figuring out your child’s career options, colleges to match and how you will pay for it then visit my website for a ton of FREE information at www.collegeplanningllc.com. 

 To refinance your mortgage or buy a home apply online at www.ctmortgageplanners.com.

The other day while I was at the gym I saw this special on CNN that was talking about how the occurences of houses catching on fire is much higher when the home is in foreclosure.  It got me to thinking about what I would do if my house was in foreclosure and I had no where to go for help with the mortgage payment.

Would a normal law-abiding citizen such as myself seriously entertain the notion of burning my own house down to collect insurance money and pay off the mortgage?

 After thinking about it for several minutes I concluded that I would not be able to burn my house down. I know that it would be embarrassing to have the signs in the yard and having my friends, neighbors and family realize that I couldn’t handle my money, but the worst that could happen is that my credit is ruined for several years and maybe I have to pay some extra taxes if they sell at a loss, but all in all I wouldn’t want to also face going to prison on top of the issues.

Tell me your thoughts, would you burn it down?