Our children deserve better

THE GIRL NINJA

Liza Gaspar

(Part 1 of 3)

“Liz, your goddaughter dropped from Top 1 to Top 11 this school year because she doesn’t have extracurricular activities. She was crying when she learned. Naawa nga ako sa bata eh.”

My heart broke when I read my friend’s Facebook message. Unfortunately, my goddaughter’s situation is not unique. Millions of brilliant children with lots of potential are deprived of the best opportunities a well-funded education will bring them. Every day, in this country and in other parts of the world, the divide between the wealthy and the poor becomes wider and more so when it comes to education.

The children of wealthy families go to the best school and given the best learning environment and experience that money can buy while the children of poor families make do with inaccurately written textbooks, wading through rivers just to be able to attend school, and even skipping meals which my Leo, my brother, did when he was studying at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (I will eventually write my mother’s story – how she survived sending the four of us to university after my father died and with just her public school teacher’s salary as her income).

Recently hundreds of thousands of high school and elementary students graduated. Statistics show that out of every 100  who enrolled in elementary only 65 will complete Grade 6 and 43 of these graduates will complete high school. Out of these 43 who finished high school, only 7 of them will successfully earn a college degree. It is not difficult to surmise (yes, these is one of the words I learned in my 17 years in formal school which mean conclude) that one of the reasons for this dismal graduation rate is the financial ability of parents to send their children to elementary, high school, and then university.

What the above statistics means is that for every 10 babies born in the country, only 1 will grow up to have gone through our complete educational system. Look around you and ask yourself, “How many of these children will finish university?”

I am not here to pontificating how alarmingly bad our educational system is – God knows how this is so – rather I am here to help you plan your financial life such that with the wealth you have, no matter how small, you can provide the best educational experience for your children based on your resources.

For parents with young children, I am pretty that you want your kids to be those which statistics says will graduate after 15 or so odd years through our educational system. So shall we plan such that the chances of your children earning their college degree increase? Then, let’s begin removing the financial uncertainty.

When planning to save for your children’s education, we will answer the following questions

Where will he or she study?

When will he or she go to college?

How much will you need to send her to his or her college of choice?

How do you save for this amount?

A note before we begin. I decided to focus this discussion on the building of college education fund for children. Though I understand that where our children go to for elementary and high school education are also very important, after all these total 12 years, financing college education is much harder to do than elementary and high school.

In the next two columns, we will answer these 4 questions. I will walk you through how you will need to answer them based on your specific circumstances.

(Liza M. Gaspar is a wealth coach and personal finance enthusiast. She also volunteers for the Rotary Club of Makati McKinley (rcmmckinley.org) and the Gerry Roxas Leadership Awardees (grlawardees.org). Engage her in a discussion about anything you fancy at www.thegirlninja.com, liza@thegirlninja.com or www.facebook.com/annalizagaspar.)