(Photo courtesy of Joe Goodz, Flickr)
Getting ready for enrollment should have been done at least six months ago.
Not today, not in May, and certainly not a week before school starts.
A couple I interviewed once said enrollment time is their most stressful season of the year. Christmas spending may put them in debt, but the warm, fuzzy feelings ease the pain. What the heck, it’s Christmas! they say. No such thing for enrollment days. It’s just pure financial pain.
Alex C. wrote:
It’s enrollment time again for my three children in grade school. Every year, I get so depressed during this season. Everything I save whole year round disappears at this time. Then I start at zero again, saving for next year’s round of tuition fees. Can you give me advice on how I can manage this time better? How can I prepare the needed funds adequately in time for next year? — Alex C.
There’s a trick called “sinking fund” that I learned when I was a beat reporter many years ago. You may tell the kids it’s a wormhole that will bring them to a great place across the galaxy. We drop an amount monthly into the wormhole to let it grow big enough to pay all our tuition for the year. How much to feed the wormhole exactly? Divide all tuition expenses by how many months you want to save up for it.
So, when the kids are hankering for their third serving of Dairy Queen Blizzard, suggest feeding the Blizzard instead to the wormhole — the wormhole that can send them to college and a good education. Let them decide. You’re giving them a stake in their own education and an unforgettable lesson delivered without words. Great for teenagers and children.
Enrollment blues, our personal finance article, talks about this tip and many others. Check out the entire article here.
Make a date to start your wormhole. Don’t just file this tip away for future use.
For those whose wormholes have already started growing, don’t stop at next year’s tuition. Go for high school. Go for college. Go for your own post-graduate degrees in Oxford. Sky’s the limit.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thanks Robert!
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:05 am
Salve,
prescription drugs are actually free IF your insurance (the insurance you get while working and not the government health insurance) pays for it…. usually the insurance pays 80% to 90% BUT if both of you are working, then it will become free by passing the difference to your spouse’s insurance. The government insurance pays for the rest. For example, you have an eye exam for glaucoma. The doctor’s fee, and all the laboratory tests done are free. It will be charge to the Universal health insurance (government). You just have to pay for the prescription drug first hand then claim it from your insurance.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
C_A, I think the stipend has not gone up much, so I wonder how the scholars manage. The UP Government scholars and Oblation scholars have an edge over STFAPers. They don’t have to fall in line, and that line was REALLY long during my days. University of Pila, di ba? You are right about STFAP though. I had a lot of rich classmates who made it to bracket 4.
Like you, I also worked (Research Assistant) for the same reasons (the siren call of SM North hehe). Still, it IS a blessing, a privilege and a damn good thing for a probinsyana like me, you know?
April 21st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Ria, me too. Me too. But I think that if the government handles its finances well enough and there aren’t many leakages, it doesn’t have to tax its citizens very much.
P500 per unit may be expensive compared with the tuition fee rate many, many years ago, but compared with UA&P and Ateneo, it’s still cheap. STFAP??? I remember those looooong lines! I’m glad I was spared hehe.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Oh yes the DOST scholarship is the best so far
STFAP? Pffft! And I heard it is now P500/unit these days.