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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]13-year-old: $350k (stopped contributions, moved to conservative allocation)
6-year-old: $164k (100% in a broad index fund)[/quote]

Doesn’t look like you know what you’re doing. $350K is what you should have for a 17-year-old, maximum. You obviously over contributed, which is essentially a gross miscalculation and sunk cost. [/quote]

They have a 6 yo whom they can transfer any "excess".  So as long as they stop contributing to the 6yo account soon, this isn't an issue.

[/quote]

I will not stop contributing to the six-year-old's 529 plan until they have 95% of the cost of attendance at our alma matter. Financial Samurai does a nice job describing why overcontributing to a 529 plan is not a "gross miscalculation and sunk cost": https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-to-do-with-leftover-money-in-a-529-plan/

We value education and started contributing to the gift tax exclusion to each kid's 529 plans at birth, even when it hurt because we also needed a nanny.  Now we're further in our careers, and it doesn't hurt anymore to allocate $18k per year to the six-year-old's 529 account.  [b]We'll most likely be retired before they start college, and we'd prefer to have it fully funded prior to retiring.[/b] [/quote]

Just out of curiosity, why?

I understand choosing to put money in a 529 even if you are confident you could bankroll college with cash (which I'm betting you could whether you are retired or not). There are tax advantages to the 529 plus I do see benefit in setting money aside just for education just in case the worst happens, so you don't raid a kid's college fund for something else (I personally would not worry about this for myself but I get the logic here).

But I'm not sure why it matters if your kid's college fund is "fully funded" prior to your retirement or not, because presumably you will have a similar income in retirement as pre-retirement, won't you? Even if your income goes down, you won't be contributing to retirement anymore which will increase cashflow. If you also have a paid off house, then you should have tons of cash on hand.

We have money in a 529 but we don't fund anywhere near the gift amount each year and we don't view it as the only or even primary source of college funds. We aren't sure if we will retire before our kid starts college or not -- I think this is going to depend mostly on whether at that point in life we are excited to start the next phase of travel and freedom with our kid out of the house, or want to keep our jobs/lifestyle more steady to help ease the transition to empty nesting (possibly for both us and our kid -- I could see us wanting to keep things pretty similar the first year or two as we all adjust to the change of living apart). But it's not a financial decision. Our income in retirement will be about the same or could even be a little higher than pre-retirement. Some of this depends on the market, but I'm not worried that we need to worry about not having the funds to contribute an extra 20-30k in cash-on-hand to a tuition bill or other expenses whether we are retired or not. House will be paid off and our draw down amounts are set to approximate our pre-retirement income anyway.[/quote]

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