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%.
Siegelâs research showed that for the period between 1926 and 2006 (when he wrote the book): 1  Stocks produced an average real return of 6.8%. 2  Long-term government bonds yielded an average real return of 2.4%. 3  Gold had a real return of 1.2%.