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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]While my DD was looking, we just said to be cognizant of price but just look to see what you might like (ie city? Big school? Etc).

Now that she’s a senior and getting ready to apply, I put togther a very simple spreadsheet to show

How much money is currently in her 529: $100,000
How much she can take in loans each year: $5500
How much we can afford/are willing to spend every month as if it were a car payment: $1600

I did the net price calculator for each school she is interested in and plugged in the numbers against the above. This (thankfully!) resulted in some schools that were more than we were willing to spend*, some right on the nose,’and some where the price is below and she can have the rest of the money to travel or for graduate school.

* I’ve moved away from saying “what we can afford” to “what we are willing to spend”. If we stopped saving money for retirement for the next four years we could totally afford more, but I am not willing to do that.[/quote]

Excellent plan!  You certainly should not stop saving for retirement.  With your data, you can contribute $19K (the "car payment" over 12 months) each year, plus $25K from the 529.  Put that with the loans and your daughter has $50K per year.  There are plenty of excellent schools in that price range.  And if she chooses somewhere that costs less, she has $$$ for grad school.  There is abolutely no need to go into debt for college.  [/quote]

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