Anonymous wrote:Nevada because that is who the 529 account I opened through my bank is with. I live in DC though, so should i switch to their plan for the tax deduction? I'm totally ignorant of these types of things and would appreciate advice.

Same. Vanguard defaults to Nevada and we didn't make any changes. DC resident.

Illinois and NY

Utah. DC resident. It was the best plan around when the 529 was opened.

Nevada because that is who the 529 account I opened through my bank is with. I live in DC though, so should i switch to their plan for the tax deduction? I'm totally ignorant of these types of things and would appreciate advice.

I use VA for the tax benefits. I chose the target date funds, and it looks like the fees are about .4% to .5%. Is that considered good for these types of funds?

CA because we used to live there and it was also highly ranked.

VA for the tax break, since we live there. We plan to move it to UT (lower fees, better return) after a while (however long we need to keep it in VA to get the tax break).

NY because it's a good plan and we're considered NY residents because of the military. He'll probably retire in a few years and we'll be VA residents then, so we'll see if it makes sense to change or not.

Can you do a 529 before you have kids to begin saving. Just change the beneficiary?

Anonymous wrote:VA Invest. Right now I have it all in domestic and international stock indexes because the kids are young.

+1. All stock.

In DC, you want to use the DC plan to get the tax deduction. As mentioned above, you can then transfer, but about a year ago DC switched its contract and the new funds have very reasonable fees. They might not be the absolute lowest, but they are very close it's not worth a bunch of extra paperwork to save $30-$40 a year.

VA Invest. Right now I have it all in domestic and international stock indexes because the kids are young.

Virginia (in the Invest program not the pre-paid). We get the tax breaks because we live here and Vanguard runs the funds so expenses are fairly low (though I find their website difficult to navigate to find fund and plan fees etc compared to my other investments).

One lesson learned is that you are only allowed to change investments (i.e. switching what is in one investment vs. another) twice a year for an account. (I think this is a general 529 rule rather than a VA specific one, but I could be wrong). When we were shifting our allocation out of stocks into short term investments as we approached college, I thought I could do it on a more "bit by bit" approach and used up my two changes early in the year and had to wait until the next year. It ended up working out for us because stock appreciation was excellent, but it was a little riskier investment than I had intended.

Virginia, because our financial advisor suggested it. Maybe we should have done Utah. We live in North Carolina.

Utah and Virginia