529 College Savings Plans

How To Find The Best Way To Save For College

In other articles I've been giving you useful tips on how to use Google search engine to find exactly what you're looking for when you want to know the best way to save for college and you search for a 529 college plan for saving money for that college. You've heard that you can get tax-free capacity instead of just using a plain savings account (which you have to pay tax for each year). This time I'll be aiming more at finding a "fortune top college savings plan". To see which plan might be better than another you can also add the word 'review' to the search text.

However, when I type "fortune top college savings plan" review into Google's box, I get no pages at all. Beware of putting quotes around a word sequence that nobody in the world would ever use. No webpage in the world would have that exact word sequence in it, and that's the thing that Google looks at first. You might have gotten more searches if you had typed "best way to save for college", but we'll do that later.

Let's break the word sequence up a bit. This time I'll put "fortune" "top college" "savings plan" review and see what that gives me. Ah, this time I got 823 pages, and the one at the top doesn't look like a paid page, so I'll click on that link. Ah, it's a CNN Money site, which should be a good one. money.cnn.com/2008/08/08/pf/college/529_plans.moneymag/index.htm

And, the words in the title bar say, "Is a 529 still the top college savings plan". See why Google brought it up? It says "top college", as well as saying "savings plan" and probably inside the body of the text it also says 'Review' somewhere. Now we're getting there. I've gone from no search hits to 823 that might all be powerful for me to learn more about best way to save for college.

Now we're ready to search in a more general manner. I type "best way to save for college", but this time I don't put it in quotes, and then click SEARCH. This time I get a webpage that says "The Best Way to Save for College  - Consumer Tips" in the title bar. So, even if you don't use quotes, it's still using the text in the title bar as it's main way of determining the best choice for you. Only afterwards will it look at things like keywords and embedded text hits. So, think like the writer of the web page and you'll find exactly what you want.

So, now you got it¡­ the best way to save for college. Here, CNN says, "If you're familiar with 529 plans, you know that you can put money into them and if it's used later for eligible college expenses, then all the earnings accumulated through the years are yours tax-free." This is the key point about a 529 college plan, they're tax free.

Another key point he says is, "The way Congress wrote the law is that states have to sponsor 529 plans. So, each state can sponsor one or more plans." That means that every state will have at least one 529 plan. And, because they wrote it in such a way¡­ you can apply for any plan from any state even if you live in a different state (or even if you also go to a college in a different state, strange enough).

And, here¡­ clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/category/7/76/215/381 he gives a complete listing of each state, and what their 529 Savings Plans are called. See, knowing how to use the Google Search engine pays off quickly. In just a few minutes you now have 50 places where you can apply, and have learned more about what the best way to save for college is.

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