Costs and Financial Aid. The cost of attendance is the total amount of tuition, fees, room and board, books, supplies, and other estimated school expenses. Financial aid is a combination of grants, loans, scholarships, and work-study employment designed to help offset the total cost of attendance.
One of the major problems for an investor looking at that 10% average return figure and mistakenly expecting to realize a nice yearly profit from investing in the S&P 500 is inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the historical average annual return is only around 7%.
Historical Safe Investment Returns. In 1981 a safe investment (such as a certificate of deposit) yielded 17.2%. For every $100,000 you had invested, you would have received $17,200 in interest income. In 2003 that same investment yielded 2.18%, or $2,180 of interest income, per year, on every $100,000 invested.