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Mindful that you, as parents, want your children to receive a quality college education; of the economic difficulties that arise when it comes to financing it; that with each passing year, this education becomes the key to realizing a successful professional career, the Private Banking Department in Banco General has created a future education savings program that will help you manage your money long-term in order to cover tuition fees.

By having an Education Plan, you will be able to plan your family’s future by creating a diversified investment portfolio designed to cover future college tuition for your children or grandchildren. No matter how distant the future may seem, now is the right time to begin planning and saving.

How does the Education Plan work?
This program offers a safe and flexible way to plan for the future and guarantees the well being of your heirs or whomever you designate as your beneficiary. Knowing how important it is to offer you investments that you can trust on account of their stability and reliability in the market, the Education Plan will allow you to diversify your assets through investments in mutual funds and time deposits. We are presently recommending investments in mutual funds with satisfactory historical returns, which we consider to have great long-term potential.

The Education Plan consists of investing assets according to the age of your child or grandchild. The asset placement strategy based on the age of the beneficiary is the most effective way to manage the risk involved in the portfolio. From the moment you invest in the Education Plan, your child or grandchild will be automatically placed in a portfolio based on their date of birth. The breakdown of said portfolio or the percentage of its holdings will vary during the course of time, as the year in which your child or grandchild goes to college approaches.

The plan is also protected by a life insurance policy, at the option of the client, which goes into effect, and covers the specific amount needed to cover all costs in case of death.

Why should I consider an Education Plan?
At present, the high cost of college tuition requires a better administration of the assets or funds available to you. To give you an idea, the average costs of a college education have been increasing approximately 5% per year, during the last ten years. This means that the traditional methods of saving for college may not be sufficient to cover tuition. This is where the Education Plan comes in, which provides you with an organized and structured way to reach your savings goals for your children’s education by following a long-term investment strategy, given the high cost of tuition.

The initial investment will depend on the amount the investor can contribute at that time. Depending on this amount, we will calculate how much the investor will need to contribute monthly, quarterly or annually, in order to obtain the final amount required for their child to attend college when the time comes.

To demonstrate how the Education Plan works, let’s look at the following chart:

Accountholder:	Father
Beneficiary:	3-Year-Old Child
Current Year:	2002
Entering College:	2017
Potential University:	University of Notre Dame
Tuition Cost for the Year 2017:	$330,000.00
Initial Investment Amount:	$ 10,000.00
Subsequent Annual Payments:	$ 5,000.00 for the duration of the Education Plan (15 years later)

In the previous example, the investor will need to make an initial contribution of $10,000.00 and subsequent minimum annual contributions of $5,000.00 so that, based on a yield average of 14%, they can cover the total college fees of the beneficiary. The initial contribution of $10,000.00 would be made in 2002, while annual contributions of $5,000.00 would be made during the following 15 years (2003 to 2017). This is only an example of how the Education Plan works. Nevertheless, the Plan can be conformed to the possibilities of the investor, either by making monthly contributions or by making smaller or larger extraordinary annual contributions than those set in the example.

Among the key benefits of the Education Plan are: the individual management of each investment portfolio depending on the beneficiary’s age; portfolio diversification; obtaining real historical and satisfactory returns; liquidity of your funds; access to monthly account statements; life insurance policy; trust creation; professional advice, and personalized attention and administration on the part of a recognized entity as is Banco General.

A college education is a door that opens up multiple opportunities in the life of your child or grandchild. This education increases the possibilities that the students will better understand the development of society and improve their analytical thinking, allowing them to express their thoughts with greater clarity and make wiser decisions. In the family setting, when a member of the family unit receives a higher education it usually begins to break the vicious cycle of intellectual and material poverty. In most cases, if the student who arrives at a college campus is the first of his family to do so, he will not be the last, because this accomplishment will serve as an example to his siblings, children and grandchildren. Those that obtain a college degree become the pride and joy of the family unit and a dream come true for their parents. It is an opportunity that we cannot let pass because "our education is the best inheritance and an investment that yields dividends throughout our life."