Hellobee Boards

Yes. It's better than the money sitting in a bank account not doing anything, in our opinion.

Yeah, we did the Utah plan - we live in Mass. but it was the best plan out there for our needs at the time.

@dagret: 529 funds basically are mutual funds, but with different tax treatment. 529 funds grow tax free where as if you invest in mutual funds in a retail investment account you pay capital gains tax. The risk of a 529 is that if your child doesn't go to college, you have to pay a 10% penalty if you use the money for anything other than higher education expenses. However, you could transfer the money to another beneficiary (ie another child) who would use the money for college.

ETA: To answer your question, yes, we have a 529 for our LO. But we also have a retail investment account for.

For now, we have a UTMA account but no 529. We have other assets we're planning to use for college right now, so this gives us more flexibility. We're making our decisions and plans in consultation with a financial planner.

We have two setup for each of our children. We also chose Utah because our state plan doesn't offer us any special tax break either.

@dagret: I work in financial planning so we did it through my company. If you don't have other investment accounts and all you're looking to do is to set up a 529 I would say just do it on your own. It's very simple. And advisor could help you choose funds but I just use the target date funds where the 529 company actively manages the fund allocation in respect to how close the child is to college age.

We have one and its the Nevada plan. I think its similar to the Utah one. Both use Vanguard funds.