Anonymous wrote:1. Max out your retirement savings before funding a 529.

2. in MD the deduction is for each account owner/beneficiary pair. So you and your spouse can open a total of 6 accounts for your 3 beneficiaries. I think you can even make it 8 or 10 accounts by listing yourself + spouse as beneficiaries ( you can always change beneficiaries later).

Some of the MD materials say you dont need to own the account to take the deduction. So I think you just need one account per beneficiary to manage all the contributions. If married you can contribute $5k to one account.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf

Page 54:

Changing the Designated Beneficiary
There are no income tax consequences if the designated beneficiary of an account is changed to a member of the beneficiary's family.

Members of the beneficiary's family. For these purposes, the beneficiary's family includes the beneficiary's spouse and the following other relatives of the beneficiary.
1. Son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, adopted child, or a descendant of any of them.
2. Brother, sister, half brother, half sister, stepbrother, or stepsister.
3. Father or mother or ancestor of either.
4. Stepfather or stepmother.
5. Son or daughter of a brother, sister, half brother, or half sister.
6. Brother or sister of father or mother.
7. Son-in-law, daughter-in-law, father-in-law,
mother-in-law, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law.
8. The spouse of any individual listed above.
9. First cousin

Anonymous wrote:1. Max out your retirement savings before funding a 529.

2. in MD the deduction is for each account owner/beneficiary pair. So you and your spouse can open a total of 6 accounts for your 3 beneficiaries. I think you can even make it 8 or 10 accounts by listing yourself + spouse as beneficiaries ( you can always change beneficiaries later).

I am not sure about that. Can you provide a link?

PP's two recommendations (minus bold, maybe) are solid.

Are you a single parent OP?

1. Max out your retirement savings before funding a 529.

2. in MD the deduction is for each account owner/beneficiary pair. So you and your spouse can open a total of 6 accounts for your 3 beneficiaries. I think you can even make it 8 or 10 accounts by listing yourself + spouse as beneficiaries ( you can always change beneficiaries later).

If you want the state deduction, you have to use the MD 529 plan, so that's really the only option.

Unless you want to go above the deductible amount, you could open up separate accounts wherever you have your retirement savings, say Fidelity or Vanguard. But then you have to manage twice as many accounts.

I have 5 year old twins and a 1 year old and am finally in a position to start saving for college (up until now I have only been able to save for retirement). I have $65k cash to save/invest - my plan was to fund 529s with $25k for each of the twins (and carry forward some of the tax deduction) and put the rest in a 529 for the one year old. We live in MD so was just going to use the MD 529 plans. But wanted to check here first to see if anyone had any better advice/tips?? I'll probably be able to save about this much per year going forward if I keep on my current career path (fingers crossed).