What you walk away with
Two numbers, calculated — not explained at you.
- ✓
Your College Number — what your family can actually spend per year, without raiding retirement or co-signing debt you’ll still be paying at 60.
- ✓
Your SAI estimate — what the federal formula tells colleges you can pay. Usually a very different number from the one above.
- ✓
The gap between them — where every dollar of savings and every smart decision actually lives.
- ✓
A budget you can build a list around — so you tour only the schools that can make the cut, before your kiddo falls for one you can’t afford.
The honest part
Do you have to pay $37 for this?
Nope. Numbers 1 and 2 you can work out on your own — the College Number is your math, and the SAI comes out of a federal formula. Plenty of families do it themselves, and I’ll never tell you otherwise.
This is the shortcut. Forty-five minutes, live, where we run your actual numbers together instead of you piecing it together from scattered blog posts and a formula that reads like a tax return. If your time’s worth more than $37, that’s the trade.
Who this is for: parents of 9th–12th graders who make “too much for aid” but not enough to write a $90,000 check — and want a great-fit college without wrecking their retirement.
Here’s the deal
Michael Korch spent 32 years in tech, holds a finance degree and a UW Foster MBA, and saved over $40,000 putting his own twins through college. He’s filled out the forms, written the appeals, and run these numbers for families across the country.