The U.S. tax laws are unnecessarily complicated and extensive. But it’s worth taking the time to understand how to make them work for you, because paying for a college education is an expensive undertaking. The tax rules and regulations include numerous breaks for parents of college students and some for young adults as well who have previously incurred college costs and taken out some college loans.

Hopefully you will soon complete your college degree or other desired training. And, even better, you will find a job and become financially independent. Make sure that you set out into the real world with important knowledge regarding managing your money and making the most of the money that you earn. This article highlights ten important things that you should know.

At the traditional length of four years, completing a bachelor's degree is both time consuming and costly. Too many students don’t complete their college degrees or take a longer time to do so. ©michaeljung/Shutterstock.comPrivate nonprofit colleges have an overall six-year graduation rate of just 66 percent; public colleges graduate about 59 percent, and for-profit colleges graduate only 21 percent of their first-time, full-time students within six years.

Although high school is a terrific time to teach kids key personal financial concepts before they’re nudged out of the family nest and go to college, you can and should begin to teach kids about money much sooner. The latter preschool and elementary school years, when kids are learning math concepts and getting comfortable with numbers, are an excellent time to lay a solid knowledge base.

Your kids should strive to do their best in school. Their grades do matter. Now, that’s not to say they should stay up past midnight, hole up in their rooms, and toil away to get every point possible on that next test or try to write the perfect paper. Perfection isn’t possible, and kids (and adults) can make themselves miserable trying to attain the impossible.

Parents and their offspring have all sorts of dreams and fantasies about their kids playing sports, getting scholarships, and perhaps even turning pro and making big money from their sport. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having dreams and aspirations, but it’s important that they be largely grounded in reality and tempered with solid, back-up plans.

Plenty of studies and analyses show that those who have more education generally enjoy lower rates of unemployment and higher employment income. The graphic in the following figure clearly shows that those with higher levels of education reap considerably higher wages from work and lower unemployment rates. Source: U.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid — also known as FAFSA® form — is the starting point in applying for college financial aid. The name of this statement is kind of misleading because you may assume that you’re completing to qualify for student aid through or sponsored by the federal government. While you are, the FAFSA® form information and the analysis of the answers you provide on it are also used by many colleges and universities as a starting point for determining your aid eligibility and ultimately how much a given school will charge your offspring to attend.