You and your spouse need to fully fund your retirement accounts before you even consider making contributions towards your kids college funds. Your kids may qualify for scholarships, grants, and/or loans to help them get through college. You and your spouse will be stuck relying on social security and medicare when your retirement savings run out.

No.

Put your money where it belongs, in your retirement.
You can borrow for college if need be.

An expensive college is not the end-all be-all it used to be, so investing in that will not guarantee a secure future for your children, and therefore not for you either.

That being said, the cost of even mediocre colleges are going up, so I can see the temptation. There is no harm in going to a community college and transferring to a solid state university, however.

Anonymous wrote:OP Here - thanks.

To clarify, we currently both max out 401ks and Roths. We put whatever we can into 529s after that.

I was thinking more along the lines of taking some of the 401k money to put the $14k/yr (gift tax limit) into the 529s, and continue to max out Roths. I don't mean we'd neglect retirement savings completely.

We only have one kid who is 4 and we maxed out the 529 (14K each) and will do that for one more year, then we are done. That said, we are a little older and had a good headstart on retirement savings. There is no chance that I would significantly cut back retirement savings to fund the 529.

Anonymous wrote:OP Here - thanks.

To clarify, we currently both max out 401ks and Roths. We put whatever we can into 529s after that.

I was thinking more along the lines of taking some of the 401k money to put the $14k/yr (gift tax limit) into the 529s, and continue to max out Roths. I don't mean we'd neglect retirement savings completely.

You don't need to put that much into the 529 if your kids are that young. That's just too much, and you should definitely not prioritize it over the 401k. If you start when they are very young, I wouldn't put more than the allowable deduction each year into the 529 ($4K per 529 in VA.)

OP Here - thanks.

To clarify, we currently both max out 401ks and Roths. We put whatever we can into 529s after that.

I was thinking more along the lines of taking some of the 401k money to put the $14k/yr (gift tax limit) into the 529s, and continue to max out Roths. I don't mean we'd neglect retirement savings completely.

Agree with PP. Also, the best you get with a 529 is a state income tax deduction. Your retirement contribution (up to max) will get you the full monty. You're just leaving money on the table if you don't max out retirement and put in 529.

Anonymous wrote:Totally wrong. You need to take advantage of time for your retirement and then save what you can for college.

You can borrow for college. Not for retirement.

+1 if you want, you could contribute to a Roth IRA, which would be easier to use for college if you wanted to, but if you aren't maxing your 401k then I'm not sure I'd recommend using a Roth.

Totally wrong. You need to take advantage of time for your retirement and then save what you can for college.

You can borrow for college. Not for retirement.

So far DH and I have been favoring our retirement savings (maxed out each year) over 529 plans (kids 18m and NB). Calculating out, however, I will be 49-50 and DH 59-60 by the time they are both finished college, so we should still have at least 5 years (maybe 15 or more for me) of work after that to sock away funds for retirement.

I'm thinking we should try to prioritize the 529s more at this point, and focus more on retirement later. What say you, DCUM?