The following is a guest post by Scott Moore of Proliteracy.ca.
Like the thousands of Canadians, I recently read about how Sean was able to pay off his mortgage in three years. What Sean accomplished is quite inspiring, especially to young aspiring homeowners. Our team at Proliteracy.ca is aiming to help young people with an equally challenging financial hurdle: post-secondary education.
Post-secondary education is a lot like real estate. In both cases the buyer is making a long-term, often once in a lifetime investment, the product purchased may or may not be what the buyer actually wants four years down the line, and prices are propelled upwards well beyond the rate of inflation by seemingly mysterious forces. For post-secondary education, the job market serves as a constant reminder that some form or another is essential for an increasing number of career opportunities.
According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average new grad from university owes over $28,000 in student debt. Canada’s outstanding student loan balance has been steadily climbing in the past two decades and there are no signs of it going in the opposite direction. In our view, rising student debt isn’t the necessarily the worst of it. Through our conversations with non-profit organizations, we’ve found that many families are so intimidated by high tuition that they’ve given up on planning finances for post-secondary education all together. It’s shocking to learn that some families regard wealth as a prerequisite for a quality education and ultimately competitiveness in the job market.
While there isn’t much our team can do about rising costs, we want to help by building awareness and encouraging early planning through Proliteracy.ca – a free tool to help Canadians plan financially for post-secondary education.
Post-secondary education options
Proliteracy.ca aims to help forecast the cost of education based on each student’s personal situation. We do the heavy lifting to organize data that’s freely available so that it’s more accessible and easier to understand.
First, we prompt you to answer a few questions, including programs and schools of interest, and the year of enrollment. Then we forecast the cost of tuition, books, and other expenses based on historical data. The end result is a good estimate of the financial target you or your family should be aiming for when planning for post-secondary education.
As an acknowledgement that university and college aren’t the only paths to a fulfilling career, we’re also working on performing forecasts for trades and apprenticeships.
Job market trends
Through our platform we’re also finding new ways for students and families to explore trends in the job market and make academic decisions based on their employment prospects. And although post-secondary education isn’t all about financial returns, we also hope to provide a rough estimate of the return on investment students can expect for their specific program of study.
We hope that by putting post-secondary education in the context of the broader market we can help families make informed choices and if necessary strike the balance between academic and financial freedom that’s right for them.
Financial recommendations
It doesn’t get much attention, but millions of dollars in grants and scholarships go unclaimed each year, in part due to the misconception that grants and scholarships are only for students with outstanding academic achievements. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There are plenty of grants out there that are within everyone’s reach. The federal government, for example, offers great incentives like the Canadian Learning Bond (CLB) and Canadian Education Savings Grant (CESG) for families to open RESP accounts. The CLB literally gives eligible families free money, regardless of their RESP contribution level. There’s no reason not to take advantage of such great programs, so we want to make sure our users know about them. To this end we’re also starting a database of grants and scholarships that we can match to prospective students based on their profiles.
Of course, there’s often more to financing post-secondary education than just grants and scholarships, so we’re also looking to find ways to educate families about the different types of borrowing vehicles available to them.
We need your help
Since our pilot launch in October, we’ve received a lot of encouragement and feedback on how we can improve. While our team is making great strides towards creating an amazing planning tool, we can get there a lot faster by working with individuals and organizations who share the same passion for financial literacy.
So, if you have any feedback at all, we’d love to hear from you.
Sean Cooper is the bestselling author of the book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians, available now on Amazon and at Chapters, Indigo and major bookstores, and as an Audiobook on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.