Saving for college?

[rex]

I plan to start saving when the (not yet conceived) child goes to Kindergarten. I am undecided as to how much. Probably not a lot.

[wanderlustmom]

We save $160 a month per child and DH's mom gives us another 500 a year per child. We know that's not enough but we won't have a mortgage when our oldest leaves for college and we plan to pay for tuition and room and board for a state school. If they choose a private school, they will need to make up the difference and we aren't planning to pay for a masters or doctorate.

[theintended]

$300/mo in a 529. We'll increase this some after daycare, and hope to have enough between savings, investments and our monthly extra funds at the time to pay for all of undergrad.

[Deleted]

No kids yet (not sure if we'll ever have them). If we do, it is unlikely we'll be able to save much until there are no daycare expenses, although who knows how our incomes will change by then - we may have more money available.

I do know that if we have kids, I want to be able to pay for as much as possible. I don't want my kid to choose a school regardless of what it costs, but I don't really want cost to be the #1 deciding factor, either. I went to cheap state schools for my degrees and I am not that impressed with their quality, networking opportunities, etc. I would rather my child invest his/her time and our money in something that will truly help them find the best jobs possible. I don't doubt that our child would be smart (barring a disability of some sort, I guess) and hopefully would get some scholarships. Realistically paying for an entire private school education is never going to happen, but I don't want my child to start his/her adult life with the kind of debt I have.

Of course at this rate my child (who won't arrive for a few years if I have any control over it) will be in college approximately the time I pay off my student loans, so we'll see! I hope not to drag them out that long but that's the current schedule +o(

[marchmom06]

We don't do any fixed monthly amount, but randomly when we have extra funds. Between the 2, we currently have $25K in their 529s. We need to start amping this up as school costs go down (youngest just started kindergarten this month, but we pay for full day + after care for both kids). Our goal is to fully fund this. If not out of the 529s, we expect to be able to cash flow the rest.

[Deleted]

Sept 27, 2012 18:23:36 GMT -5 @mx said:

We don't have kids but we have a plan to either use cash flow or dip into our investments (and a lot of our stock market activity is done with this in the back of our minds) to cover the full costs of our friends' kids (2 kids) to go to college.

Of course we are also banking on the fact that they will continue to be incredibly bright and therefore get huge grants based on being extremely low income, black, children of refugees whose mother's highest educational attainment = 0. Whatever that doesn't cover I will pay in full. I want to buy those kids every possible advantage. If that means $100,000 a year for Harvard I will pay it. For kids in their position buying that network is so valuable that I don't think it can even be valued in dollars.

this seriously made me cry. You are amazing.

[megalicious]

We're in the odd position that DH will be old enough to withdraw from his retirement by the time DD gets to college. So the financial planner told to consider part of that as being for her college. Yay for marrying old.

[vanillacourage]

$100/month/kid. My mom usually also gives a big check at Christmas that goes in the college fund. We have about $11k saved for DS1 (4 yrs old) and just a couple hundred saved for DS2 (born in April). Still, even for an instate public school it's nowhere near enough to pay for it 100% (our goal). Boooo.

ETA: when we're no longer paying $19k/yr in daycare that will obviously open up other savings options. :-(