If your HHI is between 200-300k, how much will you have saved for college

[Anonymous]

By the time we made $250k, we started putting $1k/month per kid (2 kids total) into 529s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we assume a 6% rate of return and an increase in costs of 5% per year like the calculators say, we will have $275k for our oldest and $350k for our youngest based on current balance and savings rate.

Neither of those amounts would come close to being able to full pay at a private school. We live in DC so no instate option and many of the really good state flagships are in the mid $50s to high $60s with room and board today…we’d be highly short of schools comparable to UVA.

The younger will have more because we upped our rate of savings when the youngest was 4 and the oldest was 9, so the youngest will have many more years to benefit from that (coinciding with the end of daycare which freed up $2k a month in our budget). We currently save $1000/month/child. Prior to about a year and a half ago we saved $4k/year/child.

$350 is crazy. Most people aren’t paying this much for college.

My youngest kid won’t enter college for 12 years. Many privates currently run close to $80k a year and top state flagships run an average of $60k. That’s $320 or $240 at today’s prices. The $350 we will have in 12 years won’t come close with rising costs unless something drastically changes for college pricing given that’s close to what people are paying today.

Smart planning on your part. Assuming your income is high enough your kid will not get any Financial aide, it seems ridiculous that parents do not want to plan and save. At a minimum, if you can afford it, you should save for the state schools, which will be $50K+/year in a decade if not more.

[Anonymous]

We had $138k fro my son. He is entering senior year of college and we have $80k left.

We have $160K saved for my daughter (entering senior year of high school).

[Anonymous]

We just popped our head into $200K HHI territory. We have $95K saved for our HS junior and $85K saved for our HS freshman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we assume a 6% rate of return and an increase in costs of 5% per year like the calculators say, we will have $275k for our oldest and $350k for our youngest based on current balance and savings rate.

Neither of those amounts would come close to being able to full pay at a private school. We live in DC so no instate option and many of the really good state flagships are in the mid $50s to high $60s with room and board today…we’d be highly short of schools comparable to UVA.

The younger will have more because we upped our rate of savings when the youngest was 4 and the oldest was 9, so the youngest will have many more years to benefit from that (coinciding with the end of daycare which freed up $2k a month in our budget). We currently save $1000/month/child. Prior to about a year and a half ago we saved $4k/year/child.

Do you treat the accounts as separate? Although our oldest has more money in his accounts, we will ensure they both receive the same level of support.

I think of them as separate because there are 5 years between our children. And while this is what I anticipate given historic returns, I can’t guarantee it, plus school will be cheaper for the older one given 5 years of 5% increases per year before the younger one gets to college. Probably to the tune of $12-20k more per year expensive 5 years later given historic increases, so the younger one needs more anyway to pay for the same thing…I certainly don’t have the money to “even it out” if say they both attend UVA at out of state rates, calculators predict it would cost $402k for the oldest, $489k for the youngest. So to be “even”, if I full paid, I’d wouldn’t be able to then turn around and give the oldest the $87k to make what I spent even. I think it would be even that I paid for a 4 year degree for each kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Are you all between the 200-300k HHI? I feel like everyone on this board makes so much more than that. We have about 65k for the oldest-6 more years to go until college. I started contributing more this year. At the end, it will probably be just under 100k/kid.
For the PP who said we don’t have to pay for college. I would like to help my kids at least not graduate with debt. It feels like so many kids already have a leg up in other ways bc of parental help. This seems like the least we can do.

I’ve posted a couple times. Yes. We long were at $250k-$260k and just recently within the last year a new job bumped gross up to $295k. When we started saving for our oldest we were making around $175k. After retirement, mortgage, food/utilities/clothes/etc, and daycare costs, we then made sure we put $4k away for the 529 before we allocated money to other buckets. To be honest we haven’t done any big family trips (we don’t have time anyway as we have two sets of long distance grandparents that eat up our vacation time), we keep cars for a very long time (currently have one that’s 19 years old), and neither of us has any expensive hobbies. Our kids do rec sports and extracurriculars offered at school at low or no cost.

[Anonymous]

We saved 280 for DC. Using every cent of it at a top private right now. Thank god I ran the numbers when DC was 3, and thank god I believed them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Are you all between the 200-300k HHI? I feel like everyone on this board makes so much more than that. We have about 65k for the oldest-6 more years to go until college. I started contributing more this year. At the end, it will probably be just under 100k/kid.
For the PP who said we don’t have to pay for college. I would like to help my kids at least not graduate with debt. It feels like so many kids already have a leg up in other ways bc of parental help. This seems like the least we can do.

Yes, we've been in $200K-300K for a while (and probably will always be) and our kids are going to college imminently. Don't feel too bad for your savings -- our 529 plans will be at about $80K for each of them! But like you we're planning to do what it takes to ensure that they won't graduate with debt. By the way, our MD 529 growth rate has been way worse than any of our other (retirement) investments, so I'd be skeptical about building the kids' accounts by interest. Our rate of return hasn't even matched the rate of increase in private college costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had $138k fro my son. He is entering senior year of college and we have $80k left.

We have $160K saved for my daughter (entering senior year of high school).

This is PP. We started at 85k HHI and saved $100 a month. We probably hit $200K when the kids were 14 and 10. We are at $260k. At the height of college savings we were putting in $1200/month.

[Anonymous]

We just recently started making that and when we made $125K or less, we heavily saved. Have a prepaid and maybe $100-125K, in a 529, maybe more but have not looked. We will stop there and go into retirement if we need to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Per kid? I feel like we are way behind on our 529. We won’t qualify for any financial aid (duh). I think we underestimated college costs.

Our HHI is currently 290K. Seventeen years ago, when we first started saving $900 per month per child, our HHI was about $200K. We have three kids, so we’re saving about $32.5K per year right now or 11% of our HHI on college savings. Our oldest is a senior and has $302K saved in his 529 plan. DC#2 and DC#3 are equally on track, obviously a bit less since younger.

We’re also still pushing about 20% of HHI into our 401k plans with employer matching so I think we’re doing okay there as well (we have right around $1.9M total), mid-40s. So, yeah, between retirement savings, college savings, and income taxes, we’re left with maybe $10K per month NET for all our expenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had $138k fro my son. He is entering senior year of college and we have $80k left.

We have $160K saved for my daughter (entering senior year of high school).

This is PP. We started at 85k HHI and saved $100 a month. We probably hit $200K when the kids were 14 and 10. We are at $260k. At the height of college savings we were putting in $1200/month.

NP here. We started at 25K HHI and saved $200 a month. I probably hit $2M in each 529 plan when the the kids were 14 and 10. I now have an HHI of 8 figures and a NW of 12 figures. BTW, we only own a used Toyota Civic with 7M miles on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Are you all between the 200-300k HHI? I feel like everyone on this board makes so much more than that. We have about 65k for the oldest-6 more years to go until college. I started contributing more this year. At the end, it will probably be just under 100k/kid.
For the PP who said we don’t have to pay for college. I would like to help my kids at least not graduate with debt. It feels like so many kids already have a leg up in other ways bc of parental help. This seems like the least we can do.

I am. I make $295. I’m single and contribute $1,500 per child each month. My goal is $55k for each year in school.

However, the market is tanking, so the best laid plans…

[Anonymous]

We have $180 for my college freshman and $147 for my HS freshman. The college kid got a nice scholarship to an OOS school which will be about $40k annually.

[Anonymous]

We have one kid. We are aiming to have $150k saved and cash flow the rest.