kryzak wrote:
thank you so much solaris!
One more question, if you have some money in the bank that could potentially cover all of your tuition and living expenses for the 2 years, does it make sense to get any unsubsidized loans (even the Stafford ones) at all, since savings rates are lower than even the 6.8% fixed loan interest rate?
Not sure about US residents tax implications about this, but a possibility is to use the funds in the FX market, therefore you can gain the benefits of a carry trade. (The main reason the JPY went weak last year). Of course you would have to ride the currency fluctuations.
The alernative is to set up an offshore account and stash the money there in a tax free haven, or in an alternative currency which pays out higher interest rates (e.g. Australia/New Zealand).
In fact one good potential source is the INR (Indian Rupee). Interest rates are up, economy is strong, US economy is weakening, and the currency is weakening against the rupee. This means converting your money to rupees, garner the interest rate for a short while, wait for the medium term trend to continue and convert back to dollars and you have made a profit of the extra % interest, PLUS the extra dollars from it downward trend.
Of course, that depends on the current economic situation remaining, and in fact , it would be beneficial (in terms of this trade), if the Indian economy did better than expected and the USA worse.
(I trade in currencies in my spare time and researched off shore banking when i moved abroad)