This week, I’m talking about how I invest my money as a financial advisor. 

Today, I’m talking about how I save for my kid’s college as a financial advisor. College is expensive. That’s no secret. 

My husband and I went to college and it’s important to me that my kids attend college as well. But not just any college. You see, I’m Catholic. And not just any Catholic. I’m so Catholic that I wear a veil to Mass. I’m so Catholic that I think I might explode if I don’t go to confession at least every 6 weeks. I’m so Catholic that I look with admiration at the family at my church who needs a 12 passenger Sprinter van to fit all of their kids.

My faith is the most important thing in my life, and my top priority as a mother is to raise my children in the faith and do everything I can to ensure that they have a deep and enduring relationship with Jesus. An important part of that is sending my children to solid, Catholic schools. And that includes college. 

My children aren’t aware of this yet, but their list of mom-approved Catholic colleges is rather short. Only the most traditional Catholic schools make the list. 

So that means that if my kids decide to go to college, it won’t be cheap, since all Catholic colleges fall into the private schools category. 

For that reason, I have been saving for my kids college education since they were infants. And my approach to saving for college is unique. I actually can’t take credit for this one - it’s my dad’s idea. 

The idea is to frontload college savings into the first 5-7 years of life. And then once kids are around this age,you reduce or eliminate college savings and let the money grow from there by investing in the stock market. Then once kids turn 15, you gradually start reducing the exposure to stocks, so that by the time the child turns 18 and starts college their funds are secure and out of stocks, so you don’t worry about major stock market declines around the time you’ll need the funds for school. 

This accomplishes 2 important things: First of all, you’re not stuck with helping your kids pay for college in your peak earning years when funds would be better off used for saving for retirement - remember - you stopped saving by the time junior was a second grader. Secondly, because you started saving early in life when college was still nearly 2 decades away, most of the funds for college come from growth and earnings rather than your dollars, so it minimizes the overall amount needed for college when you start saving as early as possible.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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