[Hardika]

My529… What is the recommended savings target for 529 plans? We have two children, aged 4 and 6, with accounts, and contribute to them regularly.

What is the ideal amount that we should aim to save for both kids?

We are in California and kids will pursue in the same area.

[Rick]

Half of expected need in 529. The first half.
Then second half in a brokerage account in your name.

Flexibility is key.

[Kim]

They are so young. There’s no way to predict where they will go, if you move states or if they go private or public. If I had a magic ball back then it would have been $150-200k for each of our 3 kids.

We have one kid going in state but it’s still over $35k per year. , one kid at NYU and the third will likely go to school oos to pursue a coastal major.

So, for ex// if I lived in Iowa and my child wanted to study marine sciences with hands on experiences there’s nothing in Iowa for in state.

Because it’s an unknown you just prepare as best you can and if it cost more there’s cash flowing some.

Student can take out some loan $ in their name only. Plus, they can work in summers.

We did the Utah plan even though we lived in IL at the time

[Lisa]

In state school…..$120k each, adjusted to inflation to their year of high school graduation should get you 80-100% of the way there, depending upon where/how they live for housing & food costs.

Private college is today $60-80k/year x 4, but you can aggressively shop around for schools to find academic/interest/sports scholarships to reduce the cost to in state, and/or be a resident assistant (RA).

The trick is not to over fund.

[Wilson]

There are many college savings calculators where you can plug in ages, costs in today’s dollars, projected inflation, and projected returns.

I would start plugging in some numbers based on a range of different annual cost of attendance.

Then the calculator will tell you how much you need to save per month.

[Ellie]

Great advice here! It’s an astonishing amount, if you want to be able to cover it. You’ll have time for compounding, but aim for at least $100-150k per kid.

Do take care of debt, emergency funds, and your retirement first.

As a single ma, I was able to generate about $50k per kid, and wish I’d started earlier.

It was depressing when they were applying to schools – it could cover nearly two years of our state university and both kids got scholarships.

That said, neither of my kids has chosen to go to college yet (not because of the cost)!

I moved the 529 into aggressive growth funds and if it turns out they won’t use that money for education, we’ll it to Roths for them over time.

Just an example of life – you never know how things will unfold!

[Karen]

How much of their college do you want to cover and how much choice are you willing to give your kids? I have a college freshman so I’ve just gone through what it costs.

In our state, our public unis (our cheapest options) are $140k for 4 years, all the way up to some private schools we looked at which were up to $280k for 4 years **after financial aid.** You can reduce costs a little by having them live at home, work, or take the $5k-$7k/yr in loans that students are allowed to borrow.

So, if your state schools are the same costs, I would save at least $140k, in today’s dollars, if you want to cover all of the costs and not have loans.

More if you want to give your kids more choices. (Personally, our approach was to only consider schools that were similar in costs to our state schools.

Some private schools did give our kids aid to get close to those costs.

Also, we were not comfortable with us or our kids taking loans in order to go to a school that is significantly more expensive than our state schools.)

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