About Us
College Funding Coaches assists families like yours in creating a realistic college funding plan that won’t force you to give up your current lifestyle or dip into retirement savings. It is the dedicated goal of College Funding Coaches to help you navigate the complex and often confusing territory of planning for your child’s advanced education experience - without breaking the family bank.
Our process ultimately starts with the elimination of COST as a determining factor in deciding which school your child should attend. It is our guarantee that families will lower their out-of-pocket college costs by 25% or more, while actually improving the household cash flow during the college years.
Our network of experts helps thousands of students every year go to the school of their choice without incurring excessive expenses. We are confident in our personalized approach and above all, our commitment to helping families design and facilitate the best possible college funding plan.
We invite you to explore our site for detailed information on how your family can reduce the increasing costs associated with a first-rate college education. Also, we encourage you to take advantage of our free report, 9 New Ways to Beat the High Cost of College.
Would you like to know more about our successful efforts in helping other families develop the most feasible financial plan to fund their child’s education? Learn more here.
Who We Are
“You teach best what you most need to learn." - Richard Bach, Illusions
The magnitude of funding a college education in today’s world hit me like a ton of bricks in 2002. That’s the year my son, Mack, was born.
It wasn’t that the concept was new to me…I had run hundreds of college-cost calculations for my financial planning clients over the years. I was familiar with and understood the look parents gave me – and each other – whenever we looked at the EDUCATION FUNDING graphs displayed by my planning software. The numbers were astronomical!
Even the most disciplined savers would struggle with staying on track for their own retirement if they were serious about paying the increasingly expensive costs associated with a first-rate college education. No matter how much money my clients made, none of them had an extra $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 a year just looking for a place to call home!
When I sat down to do our financial planning and projections with Mack’s college education factored into the equation, I simply couldn’t believe what had to happen over the next eighteen years if we were to guarantee he could actually go to any school he could qualify to attend. And as big believers in education, that is our philosophy.
It was at that moment that I admitted to myself, “There’s something about this I don’t know.” I knew I wasn’t alone, either. It is simply fact that a lot of parents, guidance counselors, teachers, principals, athletic coaches, financial planners, accountants and attorneys don’t know as much as they could about paying for college.
The whole process of properly preparing to attend college, applying to be accepted, choosing the right school, and then actually paying for it…this odyssey is one of the great mysteries of our time.
But it shouldn’t be.
After all the time and effort I had invested to earn the licenses allowing me to give financial advice, sell securities, and sell insurance, I maintained my good standing with at least 40 hours of continuing education every year (more than most physicians, by the way).
I earned countless designations, became a faculty member for the National Institute for Estate Planners and even wrote a book about employee stock options (a complicated topic in its own right!).
At no time during all that training and education was I introduced to the strategies and tactics necessary to slay the college funding dragon. Like the clients I served and the advisors I partnered with, I simply accepted the fact that this was the way it was…until Mack was born.
I was on a mission to find better answers – for myself as well as the clients I served.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. I truly believe that’s why the National Institute for Certified College Planning Specialists came into being – necessity. Some very smart people recognized that taking on more and more debt or working for a decade or longer past one’s targeted retirement date was not a winning approach to increasing the number of college graduates in this country.
When I found the NICCP, I discovered a small and talented group of innovative thinkers that had dissected every aspect of paying for college and come up with some ingenious and creative ways to reduce literally every family’s out-of-pocket costs. Legally. Ethically. And elegantly.
Most importantly, what’s so impressive is the NICCP’s methods are logical, prudent, understandable and backed by basic financial and tax planning methods that have been in existence for decades. The genius is that these planning concepts are completely integrated with those things that have typically been the domain of academia – curriculum selection, grade point average, test scores, scholarship and admissions essays, form filing and college selection. Not one aspect of this is rocket science.
It’s the unique manner in which the puzzle is put together that translates to affordability.
When I founded College Funding Coaches, I recognized I couldn’t get the job done all by myself. I’m so proud to now say I get to serve as the Head Coach of a phenomenal team of professionals!
To do this right, I needed scholarship coaches – academic, athletic, and everything else that can earn “free money.”
I needed a college selection coach – someone who could align the interests, talents and motivations of the student to the schools and curriculums that would best suit them.
I needed a tax coach – the expert who could identify opportunities for Uncle Sam to foot the tuition bill.
When you surround yourself with experts like this, putting a winning game plan together becomes a lot of fun. Just ask the coaching staff of any championship team if they have “job satisfaction.”
After years of wondering why I had gone into my profession, I have found my calling. Helping families of college-bound students eliminate COST as a determining factor in deciding which school to attend has become my reason for going to work every day.
Click here to learn how you can contact College Funding Coaches for a complimentary consultation.