Australian Scholarships Group

[wktz]

Has anyone used them/know of them? we have made an appointment to see one, to ascertain how we can send our DD to private school.

Anybody know of them?

Thanks in advance

[cupcakemafia]

I've had a look into them, and had a meeting with one of their representatives. It seems pretty good, and they quoted us around $30 a week to put away for DD's future education.

[xkwzit]

We looked into it too. I like the idea of putting money away to save for private secondary schooling. I didn't like the idea of putting money aside to "pay" my children to go on to tertiary education (which is another thing they offer). I'm hoping that my kids would want tertiary education w/o me having to bribe them :D.

Cheers

[aardvark]

We have done it for our girls, and will for DS, too.

DD#1 will be in year 11 next year, so we have been getting a lump sum each January since she started year 7. It doesn't cover all her fees, but it helps a lot, especially now DD#2 is in private school, too.

Interest rates fell a lot since we rook out the plan. This year we only got half of what we expected based on their projection when she was a bub. OK, sh!t happens in the finance industry, but I was annoyed we were not told until a couple of weeks before the payment issued.

[Rhoxie]

I'm an ex-scholarship child (and so are my 3 sisters/brother) and speaking from experience that money was SO handy when we were all going through uni (yup all four of us went). My Dad (widowed on one small income) seriously could not have afforded to pay for our books etc so we desperately needed that money.
Back then the scholarship pool was a lot smaller (I'm 29 ;) ) so the returns were smaller.

We've enrolled all 3 of our children in both high school and tertiary scholarships - although now I think it's just the one and you choose when you receive the money (ie high school or uni). Things have changed a bit since we did our enrollments but we looked around quite a bit before we signed up and it offers the best return for smallish regular payments. If you have larger sums of money to start with then there are savings plans that are more flexible and can offer better returns.

The scholarship plans are quite rigid ie you have to pay a set amount of money into the plan each month and it is designed so that money can not just be 'withdrawn' or used like a bank. You can increase your payments if your income levels increase but as far as I'm aware you cannot decrease from your intial amount.
For for these reasons the following common sense applies.
1. Be cautious and play the what if game (ie what if we have another child.. what if we have to live on one income.. what if someone looses their job etc. )
2. Go for a lower plan that has plenty of 'wriggle room' you can always increase payments when you have more money but you are then able drop your payments back to the intial amount if things get tight.
3. If you haven't finished having children - how many are you going to have and are you going to sign all of them up on the same plan ...
eg we have 3 children all on high school and uni plans ... thats 6 plans x $ = a big chunk of money :)