Hellobee Boards

We made an initial contribution of their baptism money and then we contribute $35/month for our younger and $50 for our older. We will up when the little turns 4. Honestly a lot of stuff takes priority for me over this including our own retirement and student loans etc. and we will up our contribution when our student loans are paid off. I have seen some stuff about the new tax law saying you can use 529 accts for grade school and if that is true we would funnel any tuition through that

ETA - who knows what the college landscape will look like in 15 years! It’s such a crap shoot so I think it’s best to diversify so you don’t get a lot of money stuck on one acct

We automatically contribute $250 per kid per month to their 529s. But we also have a brokerage account ear marked for the kids that we save much more in. And when there's a heavy cash position in that account, I make a large dump from it into their 529s. So we usually end up somewhere around $10K per kid going into the 529s each year. And then additional savings in the brokerage account for them.

We have put aside 2400 a year for our only child since birth but we just bumped it up to 5000. I’m saving it in a roth and going to take it out from there as needed when the time comes. We have our real retirement funds separate. We expect DD to work during college as we did.

@808love: I'm confused why you would do a roth? You can't do it in your child's name since s/he doesn't have earned income so it must be in your own name. But if you are contributing to that roth in your name for college savings, you're missing out on the opportunity to contribute to a roth for your own retirement because you are limited to the $5,500 max. Also, if you're at $5k now, you'll likely want to up that soon and the max comes into play again, where that wouldn't be an issue with a 529.

@Truth Bombs: Yes, Roth is in my name, not my daughter’s. We have other retirement accounts to cover our retirement. Pension, 401k, traditional and 403b. This one is the most flexible for our specific future financial needs/factors and is earmarked for her college. We are sticking at 5k for the Roth and not upping it based on our projections of our individual situation.

We save between $1500 and $2000 a year in LO’s 529, and then her grandparents gift another $3k-$5k per year into that account. She was also gifted $10k for her 529 when she was born.

What do I *think* we should be saving? Much more I will up the amount once my own student loans are paid off....the fact of which (that I still have loans) honestly is a big push to fund LO's college as much as we can now.

Right now we have $1800 a year going into a 529 for our oldest but haven’t set up an account for the youngest yet. We also have another 15K for each child in another investment account that came from a small inheritance.

@yoursilverlining: I also still have quite a bit in loans

Uh....$0. When we're not dropping 30K a year on daycare we will ramp it up, but it just seems wiser for us to focus on retirement right now. I've thought about saving the $20 cash gifts they get once or twice a year but such a small amount hardly seems worth it and usually just gets spent at Toys R Us.

@Truth Bombs: Yes, got it!

We're currently saving $4200 a year, but like others have mentioned, we'll increase that amount once we're not paying for daycare (minus before/after-care costs).

We didn't start there though. We started at around $600 a year and have increased it each year as we've gotten raises.

We grudgingly have a 529, mostly because it makes it easier for our relatives to donate for birthdays and holidays if there's a college fund they can directly transfer to. We will be establishing Roth IRAs in their name soon (they will be earning income, so its their money).

For many reasons, we're not saving (at this moment) to completely cover all of our kids' educations. We believe they need to have some skin in the game. Everyone can have their own opinions about that.

Since its impossible to project tuition costs, we focus on the figures we can probably guess better at, which is living costs. We expect the college fund to cover comfortable middle of the road living expenses at an in-state public university (so California cost of living) and a study abroad experience during those 4 years. We intend to cash flow tuition to the best of our ability when the time comes, since we plan on downsizing our home drastically and will be at higher earning levels. Alternatively, we will use the college fund towards their tuition and buy a rental property for them to live in and manage once they are in school.

If they choose to attend an expensive private school, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. Either way, we will expect our kids to work during school and on vacations for their own spending money and we want them to buy in to their own educations, so we'll be expecting them to contribute to their educational expenses in some way (i.e. pay for some of your own tuition, pay for your books, etc).

@gingerbebe: how can you do a Roth IRA for children?

My mom spilt my under grad with me (she paid tuition, I paid room and board) and I think that was a really fair way to do it.

$2500 per child to max out the government 20% contribution

@gingerbebe: ah got it

we just started at $600/yr per kid right now as we're working on maxing out retirement. once we can get there, we'll up the college contributions. but i also expect that we'll pay things like room and board as they come instead of setting aside that now.

$0. Their grandparents have committed to pre-paying their tuition through our state’a 529. They expect to have both my kids full paid by the time each turns 8 by buying one semester a year.

We will help out some with living expenses and also expect them to work while going to school.

@looch: ditto. Nothing specifically for college. The goal is for them to attend a European university where it will be free or have a very minimal cost.