It is Expensive, No Matter Where They Go To School

Unfortunately, it's expensive no matter where your kids go to school. A lot of people have this misconception that college costs are just tuition. And you know; when they talk about, for example, state schools or a local community college as opposed to going to private schools.

A lot of people say, "Well, I'm not going to send my child to a private school. They'll just go to a local state school or local community college. It only costs a couple of thousand dollars a year."

What they're not realizing is that it's not just tuition that you're talking about. When you talk about cost of attendance at a college, you're talking about tuition, fees, books, room and board, living expenses, and transportation costs for your new college student who is finally away from mom and dad.

There are a lot of miscellaneous expenses you need to calculate when figuring the cost of college. An average state school is $16,450 or more when you include all those costs -- which, by the way, a college has to include when calculating eligibility for aid, which we'll discuss later.

But, a private school these days can cost on average $34,040 per year. So, for four years, you're talking about anywhere from $65,800 to over $136,160 or even more, depending on state or private school, and that's just for one child! If you have, like most families, two or more children, it could be several hundred thousand dollars just to send two kids to college.

And what's even worse is that each year that they are in school, the costs don’t stay fixed at the rate that you're paying the first year because college costs keep rising, and with some colleges, as much as 20%. So what you pay your first year isn't necessarily and, in most cases, won't be what you're going to pay in years two, three and four.