College is expensive. According to US News, the average cost for tuition and fees at a public university is $11,260, with costs jumping to $41,426 at private colleges. Many parents wish they could help their children with these financial burdens and aid them from going into massive debt; however, they feel lost at the best way to help. They see astronomical numbers like the above and completely give up on paying for school.
What if there was a way to break up that cost throughout your child’s life? Enter, PennyProfit. For kicks and giggles, let’s say you start a PennyProfit Jar for your child the day they are born. While others are on Facebook snapping pics and bragging about how cute their newborn is, you’re being the responsible parent and setting up a Jar titled “College”. You dedicate 50% of your spare change to this jar because, let’s be honest, you love your kid, but you still want 30% going to date night and 20% going to vacations without children so you can maintain your sanity and ensure the kid lives until college.
We have found that the average user saves about $60 each month when their round-ups are set to the default nearest-dollar amount. $60 per month at a 50% split will be $30 going towards your College Jar each month. That is $360 per year. Although this doesn’t sound like a ton, if you maintain this until the day your child turns 18 without upping your split percentage or saving more than average, you will have $6,480 to give your child towards their college education.
Now, obviously, this is a small dent in the cost of a college education, however, there are a few ways to increase this amount.
- Have both you and a spouse contribute in a Shared Jar. If you and a significant other both contribute 50% of your round-ups then you will have nearly $13,000 saved, which is more than the average cost of annual tuition for in-state public universities!
- Up your split percentage. Maybe you don’t have other things that you really care about saving towards and you would like to devote more of your spare change towards college. If you upped your split percentage to 70% then you will be saving $42 monthly. That extra $12 per month will net you a whopping $2,592 in additional savings over the course of 18 years, putting your new savings at $9,072. That is a huge chunk towards tuition with a pretty minor change!
- Changing your round-ups from the default to $1. The default round-up setting of your excess spare change results in an average $.50 saved per transaction. Some transactions will save $.03 while others will save $.97 and so on. If you change your round-ups to be $1 for each transaction then you will be doubling the amount saved. If you change absolutely nothing else and maintain a 50% split percentage then you will have accumulated $12,960 over the course of 18 years.
And remember, that’s just 1 person’s contributions. If you and your spouse had a shared Jar you could have $25,920 saved! You can also ask other family members to contribute as well and multiply your savings even more! Tell Grandma that you’d rather have college money than annoying, loud toys and see if she’ll send some spare change your way. *
Now, obviously, it’s unlikely you will be able to fully finance your child’s tuition through your spare change; however, PennyProfit can be used to help make that financial burden a little less daunting. The idea of having $6,000-$25,000 saved for your child’s education is absolutely terrifying to most people, however, saving $30-120 monthly is a lot more feasible. PennyProfit is all about making a positive change for people — and who knows, maybe one day your child will write a story about how PennyProfit helped pay for their college!
*PennyProfit does not make any guarantee that your mother will not send your child an annoying toy as revenge for all the times you annoyed her growing up. PennyProfit cannot be held liable if you have heard Baby Shark 15 times since 6am.
