Prepaid, 529 and pay cash when college age. We will do the best we can to get our kids through college, and if possible graduate school (if they choose) debt free. I am not counting on a scholarship.

Forgot to add - We moved to Florida several years ago. My kids also have the Bright Futures Scholarship Program. It pays almost the entire cost of tuition at an instate school. So far they've all easily qualified. I think you need a GPA of 3.5 and decent SAT scores. It's not hard to get.

We have five children. There is no way we could fully pay for all of their college costs. Even if we could pay for the total cost, we wouldn't. I've read over and over again that most financially successful people paid for at least a portion of their college costs. Here is where we are so far:

DS (22 year old senior in college) ROTC scholarship plus Army National Guard. He is "college first", meaning non-deployable as long as he is in school. However, he volunteered to go overseas twice with his guard unit. Once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. His college is fully paid for by his scholarships and G.I. benefits. He gets 100% of his tuition, books, fees, and housing paid plus he gets $1,200 a month for extras. He'll be commissioned a 2LT in just a few months.

DS (19 year old college freshman) Pretty much the same as his older brother, only he has only been deployed once. All of his college expenses are fully paid. He is not interesting in making the Army a career and is working towards his degree in Biology.

DD (18 year old college sophomore) Graduated with a 4.45 and is a National Merit Scholar. She had her choice of schools. She is on a full academic scholarship - tuition, books, fees, housing, meals... The only thing we have to pay for is the extras.

DD (17 high school junior) ???

DS (11 fifth grade) ???

Not sure what the last two will do, but they know that they must take responsibility for at least a good portion of their college costs. There is tons of scholarship money out there. If they aren't smart enough to get a scholarship, then community college is a much better option for them. I think they'll get something. My 17 year old has already been approached by two schools about rowing scholarships.

Thanks to my mom my kids have in-state covered. We have zero saved for college. But that's a whole other issue.

We hope to save enough to pay a lot of it, but the kids will earn all their own spending money and give us some for tuition each semester, too.

We did the Virginia prepay back in 2000 as a floor for them. In addition we have put about $50k in 529's for each. So we are covered for tuition and R&B if they both in state. If not, we currently have enough saved under retirement/college for one to go out of state and one to go for two years. They are currently in 10th and 8th grade. At our current rate of savings we hould be able to send both out of state if need be.

On the off chance that both go to expensive private schools, I will come out of retirement and go back into the earning money working world to supplement the differences.


It would be great if they both went in state.

I expect to have about half the costs for a public university by the time my kids are ready for college. Before they apply, we'll have the discussion about what funds are available and it will be their choice to go public at minimal costs to themselves, or to help with paying for a more expensive education.

Anonymous wrote:My plan is to get a job at a university that offers tuition. This is getting more difficult to find though becuase schools are cutting back on this benefit. Other than that - DD is going to have to go to a public institution and I will help as much as possible.

This is what I did. Tuition benefit almost makes up for the sub-par salary.

We are paying full tuition. DC1 is at a private college. DC2 will likely end up at one as well. We had saved about $190k for DC1 by the time she started and have about $160k for DC2, so it covers most but not all the cost. We have been drawing out about $20-22k per semester so far and paying the rest in cash. DC1 went to private school so this is actually less than we were paying for tuition before she started college. We are not reserving anything for graduate school at this point, although would expect to subsidize part of grad school.

Both my and my DHs college educations were fully paid for by our parents. I paid for grad school 100%, my DH got some money from his parents (who were much less well off than mine but placed a big premium on education for their kids because neither of them graduated from a 4 yr college).

I would like to offer them the choice of whatever they want. The oldest is in fourth grade and we have nothing saved. I guess that puts me in the same boat that my parents were in, although college was so much cheaper when we went.

OP is doing well to have the money in the bank for 4 years of public at age 6; money always gives you more options. I guess you could say that we don't have a plan.

Putting money into the Virginia Pre Paid program (VPEP) which guarantees tuition at any public Virginia university college (you can sign up for different amounts--we signed up for 4 years.

If kids don't go to public VA school we can withdraw the money from the account like any other 529 and use it to help pay for another school.

We plan to set aside the same amount of money each month while they are IN college to help cover things like room, board, books, etc.
Any schooling beyond college, they will have to do with grants, loans, etc.

We are making it very clear to the kids what kind of savings we are able to do. We will absolutely support them if they want to pursue an out-of-state or private options, but we want them to understand they may need to come up with scholarships or other sources of $ if they want to go that route instead of public VA school.

DH and I were in total agreement that we wanted to pay for 4 years of undergrad for our kids. DH and I also agree that both of us had parents who:
1. Didn't really think through paying for college, and only put in a limited amount of money into it, which wouldn't necessarily have been so horrible, since plenty of kids have to pay their way and do just fine, BUT
2. They did not TELL us their plans, or more accurately their LACK of plan, for paying for college. It was 100% understood that we were expected be going to college, but there was no discussion about what amount of $ parents could actually contribute. DH and I wasted a lot of time in high school dreamily flipping through the pretty catalogs of expensive private Liberal Arts colleges, and parents never once explained to us that there was no money for that.
DH and I and both ended up at in-State U with part-time jobs, and have zero regrets, as it turned out, but senior year of high school was unnecessarily stressful for us because our parents weren't proactive and upfront about college costs.
DH and I are determined not to screw our kids over in the same way.
To be clear, I'm not saying you are screwing over you child if you don't pay for 4 years of college for your child. I'm saying make an plan to figure out what you CAN pay, and be upfront with your kid about it.

I plan on paying for state schools for each of my three kids. Already have it prepaid. If they want something more, I will work with them to figure out if and how they can make it work for themselves.

My plan is to get a job at a university that offers tuition. This is getting more difficult to find though becuase schools are cutting back on this benefit. Other than that - DD is going to have to go to a public institution and I will help as much as possible.

We dont have any extra to save for college right now, but for a variety of reasons we will be paying for private parochial school tuition. the hope is that whatever we currently pay for private school will then go to college and the rest will be covered by scholarships, loans, and whatever else we (including the child) can afford at that time.

Curious to know what people are planning - do you intend to cover all or part of your DC's college costs? If so, how much do you have saved/are you saving and how old are your kids? What are your investment strategies?

I'll start: I have a 6 year old DD for whom I hope to cover the full cost of any college. Right now, I have enough in her 529 to fund a 4-year public education (assuming account growth keeps pace with inflation). I go back and forth on whether to fund the 529 further (can't till next year due to a lump-sum payment); on the one hand, don't want to overfund if she goes the public route; on the other hand the tax savings might make up for the potential penalty. At the moment I'm putting another $500/month into a taxable account.

I want her to have some skin in the game, though, so am debating making her take our some small loans that I will then pay back for her if she maintains a certain GPA.

What is everyone else doing?