Anonymous wrote:200k HHI. 1 child about to turn 8. Currently 250k in 529. We started around 6 months old, automatic monthly contributions and past few years have increased to $2200 month. All of this from passive income from investment properties. We also throw in extra money when we have it.

Goal 550k to cover college. Any extra money left over for further education if interested - grad/med/law. Left over after that to grandkids.

We bought a place in gentrifying neighborhood in DC so mortgage is low, drive used car, and don’t spend money on stuff. We max retirement and then spend money on travel and entertainment because experiences is more important to us.

The passive income really helps us with college savings. If we did not have that, then we would budget more and cut back on travel and entertainment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our children are young so we still have time to save more. We set it and forget it with college savings. At last look we had $60k in the 529 and $40k in iBonds and another $22k in a Roth IRA all earmarked for college tuition. So that’s $122k and our oldest will start college in 2032. We are on track to provide in-state tuition at a public university for our 4 children (2 bio, 2 adopted). We understand room and board will be subsidized by a campus job, ideally residence life as an RA and a small amount of student loans if needed. We feel comfortable about providing our children more than what we had from our families when we started college even though it will be less than enough to cover full tuition, fees, room, board and incidentals. Hopefully at least one has a scholarship in their future.

Why does it matter if 2 kids were adopted? How does that affect college savings?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we assume a 6% rate of return and an increase in costs of 5% per year like the calculators say, we will have $275k for our oldest and $350k for our youngest based on current balance and savings rate.

Neither of those amounts would come close to being able to full pay at a private school. We live in DC so no instate option and many of the really good state flagships are in the mid $50s to high $60s with room and board today…we’d be highly short of schools comparable to UVA.

The younger will have more because we upped our rate of savings when the youngest was 4 and the oldest was 9, so the youngest will have many more years to benefit from that (coinciding with the end of daycare which freed up $2k a month in our budget). We currently save $1000/month/child. Prior to about a year and a half ago we saved $4k/year/child.

$350 is crazy. Most people aren’t paying this much for college.

My youngest kid won’t enter college for 12 years. Many privates currently run close to $80k a year and top state flagships run an average of $60k. That’s $320 or $240 at today’s prices. The $350 we will have in 12 years won’t come close with rising costs unless something drastically changes for college pricing given that’s close to what people are paying today.

If you are able to save this much you should be able to pay part of the costs in cash

Anonymous wrote:200k HHI. 1 child about to turn 8. Currently 250k in 529. We started around 6 months old, automatic monthly contributions and past few years have increased to $2200 month. All of this from passive income from investment properties. We also throw in extra money when we have it.

Goal 550k to cover college. Any extra money left over for further education if interested - grad/med/law. Left over after that to grandkids.

We bought a place in gentrifying neighborhood in DC so mortgage is low, drive used car, and don’t spend money on stuff. We max retirement and then spend money on travel and entertainment because experiences is more important to us.

The passive income really helps us with college savings. If we did not have that, then we would budget more and cut back on travel and entertainment.

Anonymous wrote:Our children are young so we still have time to save more. We set it and forget it with college savings. At last look we had $60k in the 529 and $40k in iBonds and another $22k in a Roth IRA all earmarked for college tuition. So that’s $122k and our oldest will start college in 2032. We are on track to provide in-state tuition at a public university for our 4 children (2 bio, 2 adopted). We understand room and board will be subsidized by a campus job, ideally residence life as an RA and a small amount of student loans if needed. We feel comfortable about providing our children more than what we had from our families when we started college even though it will be less than enough to cover full tuition, fees, room, board and incidentals. Hopefully at least one has a scholarship in their future.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we assume a 6% rate of return and an increase in costs of 5% per year like the calculators say, we will have $275k for our oldest and $350k for our youngest based on current balance and savings rate.

Neither of those amounts would come close to being able to full pay at a private school. We live in DC so no instate option and many of the really good state flagships are in the mid $50s to high $60s with room and board today…we’d be highly short of schools comparable to UVA.

The younger will have more because we upped our rate of savings when the youngest was 4 and the oldest was 9, so the youngest will have many more years to benefit from that (coinciding with the end of daycare which freed up $2k a month in our budget). We currently save $1000/month/child. Prior to about a year and a half ago we saved $4k/year/child.

$350 is crazy. Most people aren’t paying this much for college.

My youngest kid won’t enter college for 12 years. Many privates currently run close to $80k a year and top state flagships run an average of $60k. That’s $320 or $240 at today’s prices. The $350 we will have in 12 years won’t come close with rising costs unless something drastically changes for college pricing given that’s close to what people are paying today.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had $138k fro my son. He is entering senior year of college and we have $80k left.

We have $160K saved for my daughter (entering senior year of high school).

This is PP. We started at 85k HHI and saved $100 a month. We probably hit $200K when the kids were 14 and 10. We are at $260k. At the height of college savings we were putting in $1200/month.

NP here. We started at 25K HHI and saved $200 a month. I probably hit $2M in each 529 plan when the the kids were 14 and 10. I now have an HHI of 8 figures and a NW of 12 figures. BTW, we only own a used Toyota Civic with 7M miles on it.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Are you all between the 200-300k HHI? I feel like everyone on this board makes so much more than that. We have about 65k for the oldest-6 more years to go until college. I started contributing more this year. At the end, it will probably be just under 100k/kid.
For the PP who said we don’t have to pay for college. I would like to help my kids at least not graduate with debt. It feels like so many kids already have a leg up in other ways bc of parental help. This seems like the least we can do.