Education planning for finance professionals

There are approximately 630,000 children in private education in the UK, and their families will be setting aside anywhere from £150,000 to £500,000 per child to fund this, requiring careful financial planning involving long term savings and investment decisions. With the recent change in Higher Education funding, even more families will need to make long-term financial plans for their children’s education.

The vast majority of them will need advice from a finance professional.

The effect of inflation on private school fees, is pernicious and cannot be ignored in any credible financial plan. School fee inflation consistently exceeds RPI by a significant margin, and only the fortunate few will have salaries that can keep pace.  So if you are giving financial advice to couples planning private education for young children and/or large families, you will want to open their eyes to this harsh reality and help them make proper preparations.

Finding the current fees for the schools and doing the inflation, savings and lump sum investment calculations can be tiresome and prone to error, especially for more than one child. Allaboutschoolfees.com gives you everything you need to deliver a professional calculation in one easy to use package. The software:

o      Uses actual, current school fees and the client’s child’s actual age, to calculate the total inflation-adjusted cost.

o      Shows how much to save each month to cover the school fees as they fall due.

o      Calculates the initial lump sum investment that covers the inflation adjusted total school fees liability based on the chosen return on savings.

o      Allows you to change the following parameters as often as you want, so you can model the impact on the total cost, the monthly savings requirement or the initial lump sum investment:

·  Inflation rate

·  Return on savings

·  Cash lump sums and withdrawals

·  Start and finish dates

·  A fixed monthly savings amount

·  Savings holidays

o      Enables you to use the 5 plans to perform scenario analysis comparing different schools, or different inflation and savings parameters.

o      In addition to planning for private education, the tool now enables you to plan for higher education.

o      Provides professional-quality reports with annual graphs and tables of all the monthly flows. The reports can be printed in hardcopy or emailed to you, for you to forward to your client.

The fee calculator is web based – there is nothing to download or install, and is very easy to use.  It costs just £36 including VAT, and this covers up to five children, five plans, and up to 100 schools for one calendar year.

If you want to do education planning for several clients, we offer 10 accounts for £240.00 including VAT.  In addition to the discounted price, these avoid you having to set up 10 accounts separately yourself - we do all the work for you.  Plus, we'll renew any accounts you haven't used at the end of the year, free of charge.