On today's show, how to save and pay for education with 529 plans and more.

It's Brian Preston, the money guy, restoring order to your financial chaos, retirement, investing, taxing.

You've got financial questions, he's got financial answers. It's Brian Preston, the money guy.

You know, we've done 529, we've done college planning episodes in the past.

What I like though, this isn't just a rewind, we're going to cover the exact same stuff we've done previously.

Because the landscape changes, even the ones that are good, the ones that are bad, that don't stay consistent through time.

So I like that we're going to do a slightly different spin this time through.

We're going to get to talk about tax law changes. I'm going to tell you, I'm also going to blow the whistle on something I think is a somewhat deceptive practice that's going on out there in the 529 evaluation space.

So we'll cover that and then I want to go into a deeper dive in, we talk about 529s, but let's just talk about education in general, some trends that are going on.

If you have young children, middle school, basically if you have children or you're thinking about education funding at all, this is going to be your resource today.

So let's kind of first, everybody knows that anybody who's been part of the money guy family for any period of time knows that I have a big thing I tell you.

Bowen are leaving tomorrow to go to FinCon.

We're catching a flight and one of the first things that's going to happen is there's going to be a flight attendant that's going to get up there before the plane even leaves the ground and they're going to walk us through safety protocols and where they go tell us about.

They're going to say, you know, before you put the oxygen mask on someone next to you, before you take care of a child or a parent or another individual, you have to make sure that you are securely fastened and that you take care of yourself first before you help others.

So the best way to do that is to go back to the money guy order of operations, but those go walk us through this and I want you guys to pay attention.

We're going to walk through these rather quickly because we've done hours worth of content on this is something for you to easily go look up, but watch how many steps occur before we get to education.

So if you think about the order of operation that we've laid out, you know, step one, you want to make sure your deductibles are covered.

Step two, you want to go out, get your employer match, right? That's free money. So we have our emergency fund ish, we have our free money.

Step three, pay off credit card and high interest other punitive types debt. Step four, determine the size and need of your actual emergency fund, which is more than just the deductibles.

Step five, go take advantage of those tax free opportunities through Ross and HSAs.

Step six, double back and max out retirement plans.

A lot of steps going on here. Keep going.

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