The College Investor Audio Show

Parents buying life insurance or opening retirement accounts usually want to name their children as beneficiaries (typically as a contingent beneficiary after a spouse). It feels like the obvious choice — if something happens to you, the money should go to your kids. But naming a minor child directly as a beneficiary is one of the most common and disruptive estate planning mistakes a parent can ma...

You spent thousands on an estate plan . You signed the will . You funded the trust. And none of it may matter because a beneficiary form you filled out 15 years ago when you started a new job could override everything. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts , life insurance policies, and payable-on-death bank accounts are legally binding contracts. They operate entirely outside your will...

The U.S. Department of Education, working with its Office of Inspector General, says it has uncovered tens of millions of dollars in fraud and mismanagement tied to COVID-19 pandemic education relief funds . This is part of the Trump Administration's broader push to crack down on waste across federal education programs. Why it matters: Congress distributed roughly $190 billion in Elementary and Se...

The Department of Education says it is working to restore the income-driven repayment (IDR) payment count tracker on StudentAid.gov — reversing its own prior statement that the tool would not return. Updated guidance published March 27 on the StudentAid.gov FAQ page states : “The court actions require that we modify the display of the IDR payment counters, which will require additional system chan...

Receiving multiple college acceptance letters can be both thrilling and confusing. It's a time when students may wonder if it’s permissible to hang onto more than just one of those golden tickets. But you shouldn’t jump to say yes to more than one offer. Each college admissions offer you accept constitutes a commitment and potentially a legal obligation. Here’s a closer look at whether or not you...

he Internal Revenue Service announced that taxpayers have opened more than 4 million Trump Accounts. Of those enrollments, more than 1 million families have elected to receive the $1,000 "Baby Bonus" contribution available through the Trump Accounts pilot program. The numbers, based on Form 4547 submissions filed with individual tax returns, signal strong early adoption of a program that could res...

If you’re a college student or family relying on financial aid, President Trump’s newly released fiscal year 2027 budget proposal (PDF File) could signal major changes ahead. The plan calls for eliminating two long-standing aid programs, freezing Pell Grant awards at their current dollar amount, and continuing the administration’s push to shut down the Department of Education entirely. The proposa...

The test-optional era in college admissions is rapidly drawing to a close. What began as an emergency response to Covid-19 disruptions has turned into one of the most significant policy reversals in recent higher education history. From the Ivy League to SEC flagships, schools are bringing back SAT and ACT requirements, and some are now accepting the Classic Learning Test (CLT) as well. According...

Public Service Loan Forgiveness remains one of the best student loan forgiveness programs for federal student loan borrowers working in government or at qualifying nonprofits. The core program hasn’t changed: you still need to hit four requirements to get your loans forgiven. But the rules around those requirements are shifting in 2026, and if you’re actively pursuing PSLF, you need to understand...

The U.S. Department of Education announced that more than 10 million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms for the 2026-27 academic year have been completed and processed this application cycle. That represents a 17% increase over the number of applications completed at this point during the previous year and a 487% jump compared to two years ago, when the Biden Administration’s b...

Across the country, colleges are discovering that their enrollment rolls are full of students who don’t actually exist. They’re called “ghost students”—fabricated or stolen identities used by scammers to enroll in college courses, trigger federal financial aid disbursements , and then vanish with the money. The fraud has grown so large that the U.S. Department of Education says it prevented more t...

The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that it will move out of its longtime headquarters in Washington, D.C., downsizing to a smaller building. The agency will relocate to a smaller federal office one block away, a move that underscores how much the department has shrunk under the Trump administration’s push to dismantle it . The LBJ building, which sits at 400 Maryland Avenue SW, is...

The Department of Education is going to begin contacting the more than 7 million borrowers enrolled in the now-defunct SAVE student loan repayment plan , directing them to choose a new repayment plan. The first emails are reminders, followed by formal notices. Starting July 1, loan servicers will issue formal 90-day notices requiring borrowers to switch or be automatically placed on the standard r...

College applications present students with a challenging and time-consuming project — perhaps the largest they have faced in their lives. As a parent, you can help your child manage the process, but you can also hurt their chances if you make the wrong moves. Here’s a collection of college admissions secrets that can help you craft the ideal college list, get your child into schools they love, and...

The main difference between a prepaid tuition plan and 529 plan is that prepaid tuition plans allow you to lock in tuition credits at today's prices. Prepaid tuition plans and 529 college savings plans are specialized savings accounts used for future college costs. Prepaid tuition plans act like defined benefit plans , while 529 plans act like defined contribution plans. There are other significan...

A federal appeals court heard arguments on Friday over whether the Education Department can further delay a court-approved settlement that promises loan discharges, payment refunds, and credit report corrections to more than 200,000 student loan borrowers who say they were defrauded by their colleges . The case, Sweet v. McMahon , has been working through the courts since 2019 (as a result, the ca...

The Department of Education and the U.S. Treasury Department announced a new interagency agreement on March 19, 2026, that will shift operational control of defaulted federal student loan collections from Education to Treasury. This comes as nearly 7.7 million student loan borrowers holding $180 billion in student loans are in default . The move, which the administration has branded the “Federal S...

Hundreds of thousands of college students are enrolled in degree and certificate programs that, under new federal law, may soon be cut off from federal student loans. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act , requires colleges to prove their programs actually improve graduates’ earning power, and those that don't risk losing access to federal student loan programs . The framework, informally called “Do No...

Federal Student Aid released its latest quarterly data update , and the numbers paint a stark picture: 7.7 million borrowers with $180 billion in outstanding federal student loans are now in default as of December 2025. The quarter ending in December marked the first time many borrower accounts could the threshold for default following the end of the pandemic-era payment pause and the subsequent o...

The tax deadline is almost here! Here are some last minute tax reminders if you're still working on filing your taxes. Although it might not be the most enjoyable financial task, it's a necessary obligation that we each undertake every year. And if you use great tax software, filing taxes doesn’t take as much time as you may dread. But tax filing time isn’t only about filing returns. There are thi...

The Department of Education’s income-driven repayment application backlog has dropped to its lowest point on record, according to a new court filing submitted March 16 (PDF File). But that progress is overshadowed by a continued delays on IDR loan forgiveness and a growing queue of public servants waiting for PSLF buyback decisions. The data comes from the latest status report filed in American Fe...

Tax refunds are running more than 10% larger this filing season, the IRS reported, with the average individual refund reaching $3,742. That's up from $3,382 at roughly the same point in 2025. The increase is being driven in part by new deductions signed into law by President Donald Trump that are appearing on returns for the first time. The IRS released its cumulative filing season statistics thro...

The federal government quietly stopped independently checking whether student loan servicers are keeping accurate borrower records (and stopped monitoring the quality of calls with borrowers) in February 2025. More than a year later, it still has not resumed those reviews, according to a new report released by the Government Accountability Office . The findings come at a precarious moment for the...

The SAVE student loan repayment plan is dead — and a federal appeals court just made that official. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on March 9, 2026 (PDF File) that a lower court wrongly dismissed the Republican states’ lawsuit against the plan, directing the district court to enter a December 2025 settlement agreement that permanently bans the Biden-era income-driven repaym...

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley accused the U.S. Department of Education of obstructing congressional oversight of federal student loan servicers. In a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon (PDF File), the senators wrote that the department “appears to have progressed to active obstruction” of lawmakers’ efforts to obtain servicer performance data. The dispute centers on basic ser...