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%.
However, the stock market still tends to treat investors right in the long run. Over the last decade (which includes the 2008 crash), the Dow has delivered average annual returns of 4.5% -- or 7.5% if you reinvested your Dow dividends along the way. Meanwhile, the most generous savings accounts in the nation offer something like 0.95% annual interest yields.