Editor's Note: In The Trenches is a column written by FA Associate Editor Jim McConville on how advisors approach financial planning issues. Please contact Jim at [email protected] if you are interested in participating.

Dean Urbanski says he's seen this scenario more times than he can remember in his 26 years as a financial planner.

It starts with a set of parents who walk into his office, often with pained, nervous faces. As soon as they sit down, Urbanski can divine what they're there for without either uttering a word: They want to set up a college savings plan, but they don't know the first thing on how to do it. It's another case of parental college savings plan anxiety.

"It's now actually really quite common; the urgency is absolutely there," says Urbanski, vice president of Milwaukee-based BMO Harris Financial Advisors, a part of BMO Financial Group, who has advised clients about college savings plans throughout his career. "With interest rates held down at a national level and the cost of education rising at the speed that it is right now, it's a unique period of time," Urbanski adds. "It's kind of like the 'Perfect Financial Storm' for a lot of people with school-age children."

Two common symptoms of college planning anxiety, says Urbanski, are little to no comprehension of what a college education will cost and procrastinating on when to start saving. "It's surprising how individuals who may even be making $100,000 to $150,000 a year still look at that college planning bill a bit like a freight train that's still far in the tunnel," Urbanski notes. "I guess something that's 18 years out seems a bit nebulous, but it comes awfully fast."

An advisor's first step to curing victims of college planning anxiety, says Urbanski, is to have an open conversation about the client's personal financial situation and what exactly is their goal.

"You have to have a frank conversation," Urbanski says. "You start out by understanding what their goals are, understand where they're at financially and you then spend a little bit of time educating them on actual college tuition costs in-state and out of state."

Urbanski often uses his own experience with his daughters' college savings as a conversational ice breaker. "I've got a 7-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old daughter, so I've been very keen on understanding what the costs of sending them to in-state and out-of-state schools are."

The next step in the conversation, says Urbanski, is to ask a litany of specific, pointed questions to build a profile of clients' personal financial situation and then determine what their college savings plan goals are. That information, he says, provides an advisor the material to draw a rough draft for a college savings plan.

"That builds a basic structure," Urbanski says. "Once you get into the strategy, the common strategy is start early, do dollar-cost averaging, deciding whether or not what your age is relative to your children's as to whether it's tapping into your IRA (individual retirement account) is even a possibility because if you are not over 59 and a half years old, what's the tax consequences then on those withdrawals?"

Urbanski says crafting a beginning draft provides the client another benefit: reassurance. "As you have a conversation around their particular goals and start bringing some structure to that big math problem, it helps a lot," he says. "Because then they can see it and it's in writing. Then it's something actionable they can work on."

The next step, says Urbanski is persuading parents to see that the college savings fund is one piece to an overall household financial plan. "The education plan is just one element of a broader financial plan," Urbanski says. "We tell them it comes down to just having a good solid comprehensive plan that covers all the household's key financial goals."

Urbanski says financial market volatility and ever escalating college costs have translated into more worried parents coming through his office door. "We have more clients coming in seeking structure, seeking advice and guidance," he says.

When clients ask Urbanski when's the best time to set up a college savings account, he unhesitatingly replies: "Right now, if not sooner."

"It's so much easier if you start at newborn. If you start doing the math and you're thinking about just from a rule-of-thumb standpoint, if you are saving a $100 a month for a newborn, that's usually a pretty good number; $200 a month for a first grader, $300 for a fifth grader and it goes up. If you wait for high school, you're probably looking at $500 a month in general."

Urbanski, who currently oversees a team of 250 financial service professionals at BMO Harris Financial Advisors, offers clients five tips in developing a college savings strategy:

1.Consider starting a 529 Plan that can be used at colleges nationwide.

2.Set up a dedicated savings account to pay for other college expenses, such as books and a meal plan.

3.Share your plan with Your extended family members.

4.Apply for federal student aid programs.

5.Research scholarship opportunities.

-Jim McConville