If you have entered the client household into MasterPlan, then you can enter the dependent children. The diagram below itemizes the steps you should follow.
As you enter the children, the are added to the list in the lower area of the window. To move from one child to another, you can click on the child's name or click on the arrowheads.
Fi
rst, click on the New Dependent button in the lower
area of the window.
MasterPlan fills in the Last name of the First Client as the Last Name of the child. If you need to change the name, retype it.
Type in the child's date of birth and select the relationship from the drop-down list. MasterPlan uses the Birthdate when calculating Child Tax Credits (if applicable.
Fill in the Child's grade. A grade of 0 means the child will be in Kindergarten. If you type a -1, the child will be in Kindergarten next year. The grade for a new baby might be -5. MasterPlan will automatically drop the children as exemptions when they go past grade 16.
These fields are optional.
In today's dollars, enter the amount that the parents would be willing to fund. The family may want to send the children to Harvard, but perhaps they can only afford to fund $10,000 per year.
Include all costs to be illustrated such as books, tuition, room and board, and any other expenses such as travel or sorority or fraternity fees.
MasterPlan does not provide a database of college costs for various universities in the country. These figures are easily attainable via the web. And, as in the example above, the costs for a particular school might be more than the family can afford.
Note: With MasterPlan, you can run as many different variations of the Education Needs Report as you wish. When you achieve a result that the family can afford, you can then save the results of that report to the client's record.
If the family wants to plan for graduate school, enter the costs of one year of graduate study in today's dollars.
How much do you think the college expenses will increase from now until the last year that this child will be in college? Many planners feel that education costs will increase at a greater rate than inflation (at least for the time being).
Enter the number of academic years for this child's college education. Optimistically, the child could finish their undergraduate study in 4 years; however, many students find that it takes 5 academic years. If you enter 5 years, MasterPlan will assume it is 5 years of undergraduate study.
If you enter 6 or more years, MasterPlan will assume 4 years of undergraduate study, and the remainder of years as graduate school.
When you create the report, you will notice that MasterPlan will know that academic years are not the same as calendar years.
