Patent ID: 7698194

Claim:
A computerized method for analyzing college savings plans, the method for use with a computer-readable medium on which are stored a plurality of educational institution identifiers and a plurality of educational savings plan parameter sets, each of respective educational institution identifiers being associated with a corresponding cost parameter set specifying at least one of room, board, and tuition costs for the respective educational institution; each of the plurality of educational savings plan parameters specifying one or more financial characteristics of a corresponding educational savings plan; the method comprising the steps of: a. receiving at least one educational institution identifier; b. for each of the educational institution identifiers received in step (a), retrieving the corresponding cost parameter set from the computer-readable medium; c. generating, by a computer, a comparative analysis of a plurality of educational savings plans by (i) applying each of the retrieved cost parameter sets of step (b) to each of the plurality of educational savings plan parameters; and (ii) applying one or more tax considerations for at least one of the educational savings plans, wherein at least one of said plurality of educational savings plans comprises an account of funds and said tax considerations comprise taxing withdrawal of said funds from said account at a first rate when said withdrawal is used for a non-educational expense and at a second rate less than said first rate when said withdrawal is used for an educational expense; and d. outputting a report of the comparative analysis, the report presenting an amount of assets in at least one of the educational savings plans for each year of a savings period.