A Fidelity study found that a growing number of financial advisors are providing a wider range of services to help their clients' kids go to college.
Fidelity's fourth annual College Savings Indicator study says that some advisors are doing more than just helping clients with accumulating savings and distribution strategies. The list of services offered include helping parents with researching schools (25%, up from 13% last year), navigating the grant process (30%, up from 16%) and securing financial aid (37%, up from 20%).
Elsewhere in the study, Fidelity found that more parents are saving for their children's college education, but they're still way short of meeting their funding needs. Specifically, surveyed parents are on target to meet just 16% of projected college costs. That's down from 18% last year, and down 24% from Fidelity's first study in 2007.
On the plus side, the study found that 67% of parents surveyed have started saving for future college costs versus 63% last year and 58% in 2007.
Fidelity also found that more than 40% of parents with preschool children (ages five and under) have started to save for college compared to just 28% of parents with children in high school (ages 14 through 18).