College plan deadline
If you’ve been procrastinating about signing up for the Maryland Prepaid College Trust, you’re running out of time.
You have all day tomorrow to sign up before the latest enrollment season ends.
The prepaid plan allows you to pay for college in advance. The price of the contracts are tied to the cost of tuition and fees at Maryland public colleges. If your child ends up not attending a Maryland school, you can always use the cash at a private or out-of-state college.
Applications must be postmarked by Friday. But you also can complete the form online up until literally the last minute tomorrow.
You don’t have to buy four years of school, either. You can prepay one semester at a university. Or, buy one or two years at a community college. Or, split the difference, buying two years at a community college and two years at a university.
Payments can be made in lump sum or on installment plan.
Comments
The Maryland Prepaid College Trust is not a good deal at all. To start with, a 2.5% back end load plus other fees are built into the program. Also keep in mind that you are actually buying units in a trust, so if you decide to transfer out of the MPCT into the Maryland College Investment Plan (or another 529 plan), the value of your shares will be transferred, not the current college cost value. Depending on how the financial markets do over the time that you participate in the MPCT, you could actually lose money. Furthermore, the MPCT does not disclose the unit value of the shares when you make payments or when you make withdrawls unless you ask for a special analysis, which takes about two weeks.
There are LOTS more disadvantages to the MPCT, too many to list here.
The Maryland College Investment Plan is a much better value in practially all cases.
Posted by: Parent paying | April 4, 2008 7:00 AM