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With merit scholarship money hard to come by, graduating teens should cast a wide net to find schools offering cash.
Canadian youth will start on firmer financial footing than their baby boomer parents, says BMO.
Elsa Koertig, 48, is a single mom and schoolteacher in Moose Jaw, Sask. She earns $65,000 annually and her daughter Ingrid is heading to university. Ingrid’s straight As and clean sweep of provincial and national science fairs caught the attention of Ivy League schools, and her heart’s set on Princeton. She’s earned generous scholarships, but even after factoring in RESPs, the family faces a $10,000 annual shortfall. Elsa’s coming off a messy divorce and is saddled with mortgage, car and other debt payments. But if she could access the $100,000 stock-and-bond portfolio her deceased parents left her in trust, she’d be able to send Ingrid to Princeton. Elsa’s foggy on the details. She knows how much is in the trust, and remembers her parents saying they wanted it to fund her retirement. Can she tap the trust sooner?
Ontario student unions are joining anti-poverty, labour and community organizations in calling on the provincial government to increase the minimum wage to $14 per hour.
Post-secondary tax credits cost the federal and provincial governments billions of dollars each year, but are not distributed equitably and may have no proven effect in boosting enrolment, says the C.D. Howe Institute.
Consider this: Your clients are 27 years old and married. The wife wants to go back to school to get her MBA. She has not used her RESP room because her parents didn’t create one for her, and she attended her undergrad on a full scholarship. So she’s got questions.
People aren’t taking full advantage of registered accounts.
More than three-quarters (76%) of Canadian parents with children over 18 years old did not set up an RESP to help cover the costs of their child’s post-secondary education, according to a study by BMO Financial Group.
Parents care more about secondary-school affordability than their kids.