As if paying for college isn’t stressful enough. The lack of demand for student loans packaged for investors to buy is driving up the cost of funding for lenders, if they can raise the money to make the loans in the first place. Add that to lenders requiring higher credit scores for alternative loans and the fact that some families who are strapped were hoping to use now-dwindling home equity and collecting the cash for college is becoming an ever the more impossible endeavor.

This isn’t just hitting new students. Today, Student Loan Corp, owned by Citibank, announced it was no longer going to consolidate loans. Behemoth Sallie Mae made the same announcement last week. And that company is no longer paying the 1.5 percent origination fee for students.

Yikes! This is all stuff that higher education reporter Jeff Shelman and I wrote about in our student loan story that ran on the front page Saturday.

The New York Times had a similar story the same day.

How is this affecting you? Is this changing your paying for college strategy? For parents far from college, are you trying to save more now to ensure that your kid can go to school, even if it’s 100 percent financed by you?

It’s Financial Literacy month, both in Minnesota and around the country. I’m not much for these month declarations (I’m sure if I had time I could come up with a laundry list of different causes claiming April as its own).

But to me, financial literacy is critical. And now that many are beginning to feel the pain of the debt to our eyeballs era, it’s even more clear how much our nation really needs to prioritize learning about money.

In my opinion, it should start in school and early on. I’m talking financial a-b-c’s alongside kids learning the alphabet. Yet few states require financial topics to be taught in school. Minnesota is not one of them.

Politicians and business leaders love to talk about financial literacy. But for all the lip service and the initiatives, not much seems to change from year to year. What does it take?

If you wish to get involved, here’s a list of happenings in the state courtesy of the Minnesota Jump$tart Coalition:

• April 10^th: the Minnesota Jump$tart Coalition’s “Focus on Financial Literacy” event, held from 3:30 to 6:30 PM at the Junior Achievement of Upper Midwest office in Maplewood. This event will include a keynote address by Federal Reserve Board Consumer Economist Jeanne Hogarth, teacher-training sessions and tours of the Junior Achievement facility. The event is free and open to the public, but participants are encouraged to pre-register.

• Junior Achievement (JA) will sponsor JA Business Challenge events at Thrivent Financial in Minneapolis on April 8th and at locations in St. Cloud and Mankato on April 10th. Throughout the month, K-12 students from several schools will participate in JA Finance Park and JA BizTown events at the Junior Achievement facility in Maplewood.

• In partnership with the Minnesota Jump$tart Coalition, Junior Achievement and BestPrep, members of the Minnesota Financial Planning Association will give classroom presentations in K-12 schools.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will host the Minnesota Council on Economic Education’s “Personal Finance Decathlon” state competition on April 23. Go to www.minneapolisfed.org/community/events for further information.

• Throughout Financial Literacy Month, BestPrep will be sending volunteers from banking, credit counseling, and financial planning organizations to speak in Minnesota classrooms through their Classroom Plus program. Many students will also be participating in BestPrep’s Stock Market Game throughout April. For more information on volunteering or to schedule a speaker visit www.bestprep.org

• St. Paul Public Schools’ Academy of Finance students will visit the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis on April 9. The Academy of Finance is a nationally recognized program that gives students from Arlington, Como Park, and Johnson High Schools the opportunity to learn about the financial services industry by taking industry-related courses and participating in paid internships at financial service corporations. While at the bank, students will take a tour; hear talks on money, banking, and personal finance; and learn about careers at the Fed.

• The Minnesota Council on Economic Education is sponsoring regional Economics Challenge competitions throughout the state; St. Cloud (April1), Duluth (April 2), St. Paul (April 4), Moorhead (April 7) and Mankato (April 11). Winners from these regional competitions will advance to the state Economics Challenge being held at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus on April 16. For more information visit www.mcee.umn.edu.

• Members of the Minnesota Banker’s Association will participate in the national Teach Children to Save Day scheduled for April 29. Bankers will visit K-12 classrooms throughout the state to use games and activities to teach the concept of savings, budgeting and the differences between wants and needs. For more information visit www.minnbankers.com

It’s financial planning week and on Tuesday evening the Minnesota Financial Planning Association is putting on a panel discussion about kids and money featuring some local experts: Chris Farrell from my old employer Marketplace Money, Nathan Dungan from Share, Save, Spend, and Mick Endersbe from College Planning University.

Unfortunately, I can’t attend, but if you’re curious about teaching kids good money habits and figuring out to pay for their college education, this evening will be sure to have lots of good (free) advice.

The two-hour event starts at 6:30pm at the Ridgedale Library in Minnetonka. Here’s a link to their flyer.

I’m guessing you’ve heard the theory that one should save for retirement before saving for a kid’s college education because borrowing for retirement isn’t an option and borrowing for college is.

Sounds good to me. But what if you can’t fully fund retirement and as the years pass, the college account stands empty (or is nonexistent). Then what?

I’d like to start saving for college but haven’t maxed out my retirement savings yet. I joke that my kids are going to start McGuire’s plumbing, since it seems like the more people study liberal arts in college the fewer can perform basic home repair (although I did fix a stopped up sink this weekend). But if they want to study film and history like I did in college, am I going to say no? Doubtful.

I’ve long said that our Roth IRAs could eventually be used to pay for college, but as my friends begin to open up 529 college savings plans, I’m worry that maybe we should open one too and fund it to the tune of $75 a kid. Really, what’s one less pair of ankle boots? (Check out this London Daily Mail story about wacky fashions I came across when looking for a picture of the very best ankle boots of all time. They are not found there.).

How do you plan to pay for college? If you are saving I’d be curious to know how much, where and why? Oh– and the age(s) of your kid(s).

And for those of you out there like me with no idea how much college will cost when your little Einstein will turn 18, try FinAid.org’s College Cost Projector.

Then check out the site’s Savings Growth Projector to learn how much $75 will be worth in 14 years.

Afraid of numbers? Your child’s age is all you need to use the Savingforcollege.com World’s Simplest College Cost Calculator.

Talk about scary. That calculator says I need to save $698 per month for my almost 4-year-old daughter to attend college in the year 2022. And I thought $75 would make a dent.

I just finished a series of interviews for an upcoming column about how teens make, spend and save money.

I was surprised that not one of the 18 year olds I interviewed had a credit card. They relied on debit cards, but even a couple of those in possession of debit cards chose to operate mostly on cash.

It’s a response I should be getting used to by now. Many teens and even college upperclassmen I speak with don’t have credit cards. When I point out the empty card slots in their wallet, most say something like “I guess I should be building a credit history.” But the worry that the temptations and potential pitfalls that come with a credit card are too great.

I received my first credit card at age 16, a World Perks card attached to my dad’s line of credit. After I used that card responsibly, I opened my own account. By the time I left college, I was charging most everything and paying the balance off in full at month’s end.

I still haven’t gotten into using a debit card. I’m all about credit.

When do you think it’s appropriate for a young person to get credit? Sometimes I worry that students aren’t learning how to use credit because they fear it so. Will they magically learn how to manage credit just because they enter the real world with a few more candles on their birthday cakes?
Share your opinion and your stories– both good and bad– about credit cards for young adults.