How it works.
Education funding touches savings, taxes, aid, and timing at once. Part of it runs on a clock most families don’t know has started. Here’s how we walk you through it.
- 01
Discovery Conversation
A free thirty-minute call about your student and what you're trying to solve. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so. If we are, you'll have a flat fee in hand before anything starts.
- 02
Engagement and Document Collection
A written agreement covering scope, fee, and timeline. Documents come through a secure portal. We ask for exactly what's needed, nothing more.
- 03
Analysis
We project costs against your timeline and measure what's already saved. The difference is the gap. Where aid is in play, we model your Student Aid Index and project cost school by school. Then we look for aid your student may be positioned to pursue, and where we're modeling specific schools, scholarships too.
- 04
Plan Presentation
We walk you through it: a one-page roadmap, the full written plan, and a checklist with names and dates. You'll leave knowing what to do next week, not just what to think about.
- 05
Follow-Up
For Standard and Complex plans, thirty days of open questions while you work through it. Then a clean handoff with everything documented, or a conversation about ongoing support if that suits you.
A note on timing
The first FAFSA you file uses income from a tax year that begins in January of your student’s sophomore spring. That two-year lookback is why aid positioning belongs in ninth and tenth grade. The base year runs through December of your student’s junior fall, so by the middle of junior year most of the income that sets your first award is already on the books.
If your student is further along, this isn’t bad news. The work just changes, from shaping the aid position to comparing awards and sequencing the bill. We’ll tell you plainly which conversation you’re in.
How we help with the FAFSA and CSS Profile
Before you file, we’ll estimate what each school is likely to expect your family to pay. It’s an estimate. No tool gets it exact.
You fill out the forms. We’re there to answer questions while you do. The information stays yours to enter and yours to sign.
After you file, we’ll go over the results with you. If an award comes back lower than expected, you can ask the school to reconsider. That doesn’t always work, and we’ll tell you when it’s worth trying.
Plans built to match where your student is, not one size for everyone.
We scope the work as a one-time plan or an ongoing relationship that follows your student from middle school through repayment. Every stage is a defined set of meetings and deliverables, not an open-ended retainer.
Every engagement carries a flat fee, quoted up front. What sets it is the complexity of the work: how many students, where they are in the process, and how involved your income and household picture is. Never your assets. That is how our fee is set, not how aid is calculated. Aid formulas do count assets, yours and your student’s both. You’ll have a firm number before you sign anything.
One-Time Plans
Foundational
Two meetings, a written mini-plan, a state 529 tax-benefit review, and a savings action checklist. A starting point for families early on.
Standard
Three meetings, a full written plan, a financial aid estimate, a net-price analysis across roughly eight schools with the scholarships your student may be positioned to pursue, a funding strategy, and a 30-day follow-up after delivery.
Complex
Four meetings and everything in the Standard plan, scholarship search included. Adds multi-scenario aid analysis, merit-versus-need positioning, a filing-season session to answer your FAFSA and CSS Profile questions, and help comparing awards and sequencing payments. For families with the most moving parts.
Billing: in arrears. Your plan is built, presented and delivered before you are invoiced. If you end the engagement early, you are invoiced only for the milestones completed.
Ongoing Plans, by Grade Level
Middle School (Grades 6–8)
Two scheduled check-ins a year to track savings progress and optimize contributions. We confirm state tax deductions at the same time.
High School Strategy Years (Grades 9–10)
Two reviews plus a base-year planning session, timed to when planning can still affect the aid picture. We work through your aid index, model net price school by school, and build a school list, including scholarships your student may be positioned to pursue. We also look at where your income and assets sit going into the base year.
High School Execution Years (Grades 11–12)
Quarterly reviews, plus a filing-season session to answer your FAFSA and CSS Profile questions. We keep looking for scholarships your student may be positioned to pursue. Come decision season, we help you compare awards and sequence payments.
In-College & Repayment
Annual reviews and a repayment-decision session, with support through consolidation or refinancing.
Billing: quarterly and in arrears, after the quarter’s work is done. Fees change only at annual renewal, never mid-year. Any change comes with written notice explaining what changed in the service calendar.
Families with children under grade 6
We don’t offer an ongoing engagement to families whose oldest child hasn’t reached middle school yet. There’s rarely enough to do in a year to justify an annual fee, and we’d rather say so than invent work. What serves you is one well-built plan (savings vehicle, contribution targets, tax strategy) refreshed every two or three years, or sooner if something material changes. We’ll tell you when the time comes. Between those conversations, you owe us nothing.
Ready to map out a funding plan?
Connect with us and we’ll walk through where you stand today.
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