Can someone walk me through this? College and retirement savings Q

[Anonymous]

Do you anticipate being eligible to receive any financial aid? If so, would a 401(k) withdrawal count as income and potentially lower your aid eligibility for future years?

Also, if you have any savings outside of retirement plans, it may make sense to use spend down those assets first as financial aid calculators do not take into account retirement accounts in their calculation of parental ability to pay.

[Anonymous]

The money you have in there should grow.
You will need it pretty soon.

Won’t your kid qualify for aid??

[Anonymous]

The 401K withdrawal would count as income in the year you withdraw it.

The money you are voluntarily contributing each year to your 401K also is counted as income. In the years your child is in college, stope contributing to retirement funds and use that money to pay for college.

You have a lot already saved for retirement (is there also a pension in your future?)

[Anonymous]

You earn enough to not qualify for financial aid and you have millions in retirement, you can definitely pay for a state school with your annual bonuses or cutting down lifestyle and monthly payments of retirement investments.

[Anonymous]

How many kids? If you pay for one, you'll have to pay for all.

[Anonymous]

How much is the total cost of attendance for each semester?

[Anonymous]

All of these responses are wrong. For someone in your position, you need to continue to max out your retirement savings as much as you can and not withdraw any. And you should not encourage your child to take out student loans. Instead, you need to work with your child to find a college where they can attend for little or no cost. Hopefully they have a good GPA. There are about a dozen state flagship schools that give full rides to kids with good enough grades and/or test scores. Look at Alabama, S. Carolina, Kansas, Maine, and the Dakotas to start. Also Utah - it is supposedly easy to get in state tuition after the first year.

I’m sure there are other options - this is just what I know about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of these responses are wrong. For someone in your position, you need to continue to max out your retirement savings as much as you can and not withdraw any. And you should not encourage your child to take out student loans. Instead, you need to work with your child to find a college where they can attend for little or no cost. Hopefully they have a good GPA. There are about a dozen state flagship schools that give full rides to kids with good enough grades and/or test scores. Look at Alabama, S. Carolina, Kansas, Maine, and the Dakotas to start. Also Utah - it is supposedly easy to get in state tuition after the first year.

I’m sure there are other options - this is just what I know about.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of these responses are wrong. For someone in your position, you need to continue to max out your retirement savings as much as you can and not withdraw any. And you should not encourage your child to take out student loans. Instead, you need to work with your child to find a college where they can attend for little or no cost. Hopefully they have a good GPA. There are about a dozen state flagship schools that give full rides to kids with good enough grades and/or test scores. Look at Alabama, S. Carolina, Kansas, Maine, and the Dakotas to start. Also Utah - it is supposedly easy to get in state tuition after the first year.

I’m sure there are other options - this is just what I know about.

This.

Agree. My son wasn’t able to get a full ride (we weren’t expecting that), but is attending an instate flagship for low cost. It won’t jeopardize our retirement savings and he’ll likely be graduating without taking out any loans. To graduate college without any loans is a blessing. And if we, his parents, were paying parent loans for the next 20 years into our golden years….I don’t even want to think about that.