529 plans - how to start?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you point me to where you see this? I think you may be talking about the fund expense ratio. If you look at other "states" their funds have expenses too. Are DC's more than others? I'm not sure, but it looks similar. I have some IL 529 and they have a few dollar like admin fee I think regardless of the funds used.

No, it’s an account maintenance fee. $10/account for residents and $15/account for non-residents, pain annually.
https://www.dccollegesavings.com/home/faqs.html

From browsing https://www.savingforcollege.com/529_fee_study/ , maintenance fees range from $0-$25 across states. On $10k, $10 amounts to 0.1%. This is insignificant in the grand schema of things compared to about 9% tax break on deduction. The fund fees and performance are much more significant determiners of account balance growth. This is what needs comparison and not a small maintenance fee.

When we were in DC, we did it for the deduction and then after the account had been established for 2 years rolled the money to NY annually (no maintenance fees and much lower expense ratios). It is still ridiculous that they charge an account maintenance fee to residents, and as soon as we moved we shut down the account.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MD plan is guaranteed by the state legislature. In other words, there is more security and money is kept aside each year in MD budget to fulfill the prepaid MD plan obligation to consumers.

No other state offers that.

We went with MD Prepaid plan because we wanted some kind of "Worst Case" scenario guarantee in making sure our kids at least got a college education. I did not want to lose college money if the market collapsed. As it turned out our Plan B turned out to be the best Plan A.

OP here - this is very helpful info, thanks!

Not to say the rest of y’all weren’t helpful, just no one else offered this particular info ?