This video provides a brief demonstration of how to plan for education expenses with the Voyant software.
Transcript
In today's training, we will be discussing how to help your clients plan for a child's education expenses.
In this plan, we have two parents and a child, age six, who would like to start putting money away for college expenses.
The first thing I would suggest is entering an education goal. You can do this by navigating to the plus button at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen and clicking Goals.
If you select Education Goal, you can either manually enter an amount—such as $25,000 annually—or use our Search College function to enter a specific school. You can then select that school.
For demonstration purposes, I will enter a manual amount. We'll set this as a luxury expense, and I would like to schedule it to coincide with Isabella turning 18.
As you'll note, the software will automatically assume that college will start when Isabella turns 18, but you can adjust the timing along the timeline.
Click Yes, I do want to create this event, and then select Done.
Next, I want to enter the 529 account they have started. Click the plus button at the bottom right, navigate to College, and then go to College Savings.
We'll put this in the child's name, and we'll name it Isabella's 529. The couple currently has $15,000 in there and started with $5,000. Moving forward, they would like to contribute $10,000 annually.
On the Timing screen, you can set contributions to start now and end when Isabella starts college. We'll set those as our end event.
You'll also notice this is tied to a basic growth rate, but you can change it to a portfolio and enter a customized growth rate.
Click Done.
Now that this is entered into the plan, we can move to the Goal Screen. It looks like they are on track to meet the education goal of $25,000 per year while Isabella is in college.
Next, check the Details View screen. If you scroll to the year Isabella is scheduled to start school, you can view the expenses for that year. You'll notice an Education Goal Expense.
I want to point out that if you enter a 529 account, it will automatically be assumed to be the primary payment source for any education goal. You do not need to assign it in any additional way.
The software is smart enough to use that account first. If there isn’t enough money in the account to meet the expenses, the software will follow your liquidation orders, starting with cash, then taxable, tax-free, etc., depending on your plan settings.
If you ever get stuck while working in a plan, feel free to contact us by clicking the name of your client, selecting Request Support, entering your message, and selecting Share Client Access.
This sends us a link to your client's plan and allows us to take a deeper look at what might be going on and answer your question.